shots 154

154 FEBRUARY 2015

Wayne McClammy The quiet american opens up

Aoife McArdle promo passion

shots

shots Awards winners and their work

Marco Cremona google’s new man IN MOSCOW

Leader 03

“Christmas is, of course, big business and a time when retailers large and small aim to maximise the season’s ingrained propensity for shifting stuff.

It has also become a fertile creative battleground for British advertising; the UK’s answer to Super Bowl, some say.”

PHOTOGRAPHS: ALEX HULSEY, PAUL GILPIN

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hristmas comes but once a year, though the length of its stay might lead you to believe that, these days, the tinsel goes up in October.

But Christmas is, of course, big business and a time when retailers large and small aim to maximise the season’s ingrained propensity for shifting stuff. It has also become a fertile creative battleground for British advertising; the UK’s answer to the Super Bowl, some say.

Ushered in, partly, by the phenomenal success – both creatively and commercially – of John Lewis’ various Christmas offerings over the last few years, most large UK retailers now see the value in a more inventive approach to Yuletide advertising fare, and 2014 is no different.

John Lewis, again, leads the pack with its emotive Monty The Penguin ad, but campaigns from, among others, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Boots, Three Mobile, and a superb, if somewhat controversial piece for Sainsbury’s, make up an impressive festive haul. From page 10 we round up the best Christmas commercials and, as ever, you can see the spots themselves on the accompanying DVD or on the shots.net site.

Talking of impressive hauls, we also look at the winning work from this year’s shots Awards.

Each of the categories was hard fought and the judges themselves would tell you that choosing the winners was no easy task but, to quote Highlander, there can be only one, and we speak to the triumphant companies and people about their winning entries from page 29.

From the world’s best, to the world’s biggest: in this issue we head to the largest country on the planet, Russia, to examine its creative advertising landscape. With insight from a selection of creative directors from some of the country’s most prominent agencies and a revealing interview with cover star, Marco Cremona – who isn’t just heading up Google’s charge into the Motherland, he essentially is Google’s charge into the Motherland – we get to grips with the evolution of a nation that’s

1

Above Illustrator Nicky Fealy has etched out a very cool representation of shots editor Danny Edwards. She has also captured an equally cool likeness of her husband, Ludo Fealy, a visual effects supervisor and co-founder of post house Nineteentwenty.

Fealy is profiled from page 90.

1 Read about director Aoife McArdle taking liberties, from page 22 2 See things the way South African director Greg Gray sees them, from page 84

a relative newcomer to advertising and find a country eager to embrace creative ingenuity.

Coverage starts from page 65.

Elsewhere we have a trio of detailed directorial dalliances including the first in-depth interview with shy, but multitalented, Hungry Man director Wayne McClammy, whose amazing work across television, short films and commercials has thrust him to the top of many a ‘wanted’ list [page 16]. Promo prodigy Aoife McArdle reveals her desire for creative control [page 22] and South African Greg Gray tells us about his life – and neardeath – experiences [page 84].

Danny Edwards Editor @shotsmag_dan

2

04 Contents | magazine shots 154

February 2015 News Inspiration Insight shots.net shots 154 front cover

Marco Cremona, photographed for shots by Ambrogio Cremona, talks to Carol Cooper about his role at Google Creative Lab Moscow and his plans to make Russia love the brand on page 66. february ����

154 february ����

Wayne McClammy

shots 154

THE QUIET AMERICAN OPENS UP

shots

Aoife McArdle PROMO PASSION

56

shots Awards WINNERS AND THEIR WORK

shots.net

16 Marco Cremona

Tom Ewart Greg Gray Russia Special

GOOGLE’S NEW MAN IN MOSCOW

10 shots 154 contributors

Words: Emily Ansell, Iain Blair, Carol Cooper, Tim Cumming, David Knight, Lee Sharrock, Simon Wakelin Illustration & photography: Eric Blackmon, Vasilly Bobylev, Ambrogio Cremona, Nicki Fealy, Taisa Finskaya, Paul Gilpin, Alex Hulsey, Samuel Jackson, Dmitry Jakovlev, Chris Madden, Justin Poulter, Rankin, Kirill Sirotin, Maryana Titkova

shots 155 / March 2015

In the next issue of shots we take flight to the City of Angels, where we’ll be talking to some of the most creatively prominent people and companies in the area. We also head to Austin, Texas, where the annual South by South West festival takes place, to preview the upcoming event.

A shots subscription

A subscription to shots provides you with all the creative connections you need: online, in print and on DVD. For more information and to subscribe turn to page 6.

Key to symbols

shots icons indicate whether the work written about in the magazine is either on shots.net, the shots DVD or both.

50 Inspired

Insight

People

Get animation inspiration for the D&AD awards, get lost in a locker room, and get back to basketball’s roots in NZ

Pen-obsessed Colonel Blimp director David Wilson gets glitchy with Thom Yorke

Wayne McClammy has worked with the likes of Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman, but his dream job is “Anthony Bourdain”

08 new work

10 christmas round-up Mulberry is encouraging gifters to #WinChristmas, but which brand has won the seasonal spot war?

12 going global

It’s a poignant global roundup, with memories of the Berlin Wall. But you can always rely on a john st. parody to cheer you up

14 the source

29 shots awards

We shine a light on the people and companies whose work was a beacon of brilliance during a truly stellar year

92 favourite tech

Kevin Brown, managing director, Making London, likes to blow juniors’ minds with the concept of vinyl

16 director Profile

22 promo Profile

Aoife McArdle finds beauty in raw authenticity

50 creative Profile

The Corner co-founder Tom Ewart on delighting in annoying The Daily Mail

Contents 05

74

22 84

76 95

90 People

Places

Pictures

South African director Greg Gray on brushes with death and working your way up… from the top

Production and content outfit Dirty Robber are breaking into every sector, from spots to docs to narrative features

Self-taught lensman Pierre Winther blurs the boundaries between commerce and art for clients as diverse as Levi’s and Björk

84 the way I see it

90 post profile

nineteentwenty co-founder Ludo Fealy on why people matter more than place

95 new directors

Three fresh directors play with fire, with time, and with a conveyor belt of sex, drugs and body parts

54 US focus

65 russian special

shots traces the rise of advertising in post-Soviet Russia, from car-washing CDs to award-winning work with life-changing products

56 photography

29

98 SNAPSHOTS

Sofia Maltseva, of Bazelevs Moscow, shares her views of the Russian capital

82 GOING NATIVE

Ilya Stewart, of Hype Productions Moscow advises drinking cocktails, eating Italian and avoiding bears

80

06 Information | DVD / SHOTS CONTACTS shots

shots 154 February 2015 This issue’s top work on the accompanying DVD

shots 154

February 2015 News | Insight | Inspiration shots.net

Creative Showcase 1. John Lewis Monty’s Christmas 2. Sainsbury’s Christmas is for Sharing 3. Boots Special Because 4. Mulberry #WinChristmas 5. Marks & Spencer Follow The Fairies 6. Waitrose The Gingerbread Stall 7. Tesco Lights On 8. Maille Memorable Guest 9. Sky Movies Step into the Adventure 10. Aldi The Perfect Aussie Christmas 11. Three Mobile The Perfect Surprise 12. Old Spice Dadsong 13. Green King IPA King Snare 14. Canal Digital Silver Hand 15. Call of Duty Advanced Warfare Discover Your Power 16. Nike CR7 Out of this World 17. Spark NZ The Boroughs 18. Johnnie Walker Keep Your Flame Alive 19. Assassin’s Creed Unity Make History 20. Airbnb Belong Anywhere 21. American Heart Association Ceiling Crasher 22. giffgaff Chain of Scares 23. D&AD Wish You Were Here?

24. john st. Reactvertising

Music Videos 25. The Bug Function/Void 26. She & Him Stay Awhile

New Directors 27. Snooze Time 28. Immersives; Stardust 29. Little Boots Taste It

Russia Special 30. Donstroy Dream Away 31. Change One Life Foundation Movies That Change Lives 32. Sanofi-Aventis Group The Get Well Kit 33. Azerfon The Life Saving Cable 34. S7 Airlines Catch a Plane

SH154_p6_Flannel.indd 6

shots facebook.com/shotsmag @shotscreative Editorial material to be submitted to shots on DVD or emailed to spots@shots.net Post to: Ryan Watson, shots Zetland House 5-25 Scrutton Street London EC2A 4HJ Many thanks to those companies that submitted material for consideration on shots 154. If your work didn’t make it this time, please do not be discouraged from sending work in again. If you feel that your company has produced anything that would complement the Creative Showcase please let us know. © shots.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted, either by conventional means or electronically, without written permission of the publisher.

All efforts have been made to ensure the accuracy of facts and figures, which to the best of our knowledge were correct at time of going to press. shots accepts no responsibility for loss or damage to material submitted for publication.

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04/12/2014 13:04

08 Inspired | NEW WORK 1

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From an animated callout for competition entries to driving to the dark side in a Honda; from transforming a locker room to a fashion maze, to bringing basketball back to the streets: challenges are being set and transformations taking place all over Adland this issue…

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A cut-and-paste call for entries ONLINE FILM D&AD Wish You Were Here?

Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits, a gorilla pelting a drum kit and a barechested Isaiah Mustafa telling us to buy toiletries. To launch the call for entries for its Professional Awards in 2015, D&AD charged Next Director Award mentor and design and animation studio Lobo São Paulo with the task of paying tribute to some of these iconic visions, and other previous Pencil winners from the past five decades, in promo Wish You Were Here?

“We didn’t want to simply create a collage of pieces, or a ‘retrospective reel’,” explains Lobo’s creative executive producer Loic Dubois. “Our goal was to offer a creative reinterpretation of the Awards’ heritage, scrambling the material into something completely new and at the same time reminiscent of the original ads.

Therefore not a single reference can be found in its original form: our idea was to swap techniques, characters and narratives between the pieces, all the while keeping a coherent visual identity throughout.”

Lobo won its first Yellow Pencil in 2011 for its Cartoon Network promo Toy Soldier. Wish You Were Here? aims to invite and challenge fellow creatives to make their work a part of the Awards’ history, and you can take up the challenge at dandad.org. RW

SH154_p8-9_inspired_KF2.indd 8

1/2/3 D&AD, Wish You Were Here?

4 Honda, The Other Side 5/6 H&M, Alexander Wang

INTERACTIVE ONLINE FILM H&M Alexander Wang

Drive to the dark side – in a Civic INTERACTIVE ONLINE FILM Honda The Other Side Honda is renowned for its reliability, but it’s the brand’s racing heritage that is celebrated in this interactive film. It asserts the Type R is the wild-child alter ego of the Civic hatchback that customers know and trust. The Other Side, created by Wieden+Kennedy London with production from Somesuch and interactive input from Stinkdigital, opens with the Civic in the daytime, with titles prompting interaction.

The viewer can then switch between the Civic and the night-time Type R narrative by pressing the ‘R’ button on their keyboard. This allows the viewer to

Changing a locker room to amaze

switch in real time between two mirrored storylines. The effect is dramatic and shows the same driver, played by A Prophet actor Jean-Philipe Ricci, in two very different scenarios. The film is centred on a pioneering dual narrative technique, putting the viewer in control of which side of the film they watch, creating a unique live ‘director’s cut’ experience for each viewer. It is directed by Daniel Wolfe and scored by Bobby Krlic of The Haxan Cloak and through sound design and seamlessly matched scenes, you can’t help but feel the power of Honda’s other side. EA

Good Egg directing team Tell No One have helmed a remarkable fashion piece for H&M’s new Alexander Wang-designed clothing line. The opening sequence shows models warming up in a locker room, as the camera transitions into first person and a CG wall of lockers opens up to reveal the entry to a maze. Created as one continuous camera move, the spot, by H&M Redroom, has the feel of a computer game and required multiple plate stitching from MPC’s VFX team, led by Iain Murray.

“Over 70 separate plates make up the final spot, not to mention integrating the various CG elements and set extensions.

There was no motion control, which made the process all the more difficult. But filming hand held gave the spot an energy and realism you can’t recreate in the studio,” Murray explains. EA

02/12/2014 10:03

| Inspired 09

NEW WORK

Bringing basketball back to the streets… of NZ EXPERIENTIAL & ONLINE FILMS Spark NZ The Boroughs

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ndy Fackrell, executive creative director and writer for Dynamo Auckland, has had a lifelong passion for basketball, inherited from his father. So when New Zealand telecoms company, Spark NZ, wanted to connect with the nation’s kids in an interesting way, the scene was set for an inspired campaign.

The Boroughs sees Auckland sectioned, like New York, into five boroughs. Within these areas Spark is building new high-tech basketball courts, which are paired with famous courts in the US – Rucker Park, The Cage, The Hole, Venice Beach and Downtown OKC. Stylish short documentaries have been made, introducing each court and explaining the attributes needed to be a successful street court player.

“The Boroughs campaign for Spark NZ, flickered into life with an email to my buddy and basketball scout/producer/ agent Nigel Miguel, whom I hadn’t heard from in ten-plus years,” Fackrell explains.

“A 19 year-old kid from New Zealand had just been drafted at Number 12 in the NBA. I hadn’t heard much about him, except that it was [double Olympic Gold medallist shot putter] Valerie Adams’ ‘little’ brother. Nice genes.

“It turns out Steven is a great kid who not only was about to start his pro career, but who wanted to help other kids come through and be given a chance like he was, through a coach in NZ named Kenny McFadden.

“The other thing to mention is that my father, a 1950s English basketball international, who got me into the game at age nine, did the same thing as Kenny – pulling kids out of gangs, or out of malls and onto the basketball court. This campaign then, goes back decades.

“Spark, being NZ’s biggest telecoms company, could provide the tech side to make it relevant to kids and provide

SH154_p8-9_inspired_KF2.indd 9

“We came back to NZ with 32 hours of footage. Six weeks of editing later, we had 15 minutes of content, and some serious eye twitches.” the social connectivity to get kids outside and onto the court.

“So, Nigel did his magic and eventually the greatest street legend of all, Julius Erving, AKA Dr J, signed up to star in the films we wanted to make, along with Steven and his Oklahoma teammate Reggie Jackson.

“That led us to creating the content platform of 90-second documentaries for each court, plus a number of 60-second teasers. The films tell the background stories, sort of scouting reports, of each sister court and what attribute it takes

to make it on a street court. We chose Phillip Atwell to direct. His mellow approach mixed with his music video chops were the perfect thing to make the athletes relaxed and have fun.

“Shooting started in April in LA and finished in September in Auckland, as the inevitable athlete availability issues came up. We came back to NZ with 32 hours of footage. Six weeks of editing later, we had 15 minutes of content over eight films, and some serious eye twitches.

“Editing was made somewhat easier as we’d already found a banging track to

edit to, even before we started shooting.

A Kiwi, David Dallas, provided a piece that had plenty of nuances and layers so we could sustain one piece of music over the whole 15 minutes.

“So began a campaign that is very close to my heart.

“My father, 83 years old now, has serious dementia and for the last year it’s been special to see how this game, for which you just need a ball and a good strong hoop, still lights him up. He still remembers Dr J.” DE This article can be read in full on shots.net.

02/12/2014 10:03

10 inspired | nEW WorK 1

1/2 John Lewis, Monty The Penguin

2

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3 Sainsbury’s, Christmas Is For Sharing 4 Waitrose, The Gingerbread Stall 5 Sky Movies, Step Into The Adventure 6 Tesco, Lights On 7 Aldi, The Perfect Aussie Christmas 8 Mulberry, #WinChristmas 9 Boots, Special Because 10 Marks & Spencer, Follow The Fairies

4

Tears, chocolate and family one-upmanship.

Merry Xmas!

TV, CINEMA & ONLINE CHRISTMAS ADS

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hristmas is Britain’s super Bowl for the ad world – campaigns need to be big budget and mega memorable. this year, in shots’ humble opinion, has been one of the strongest yet for christmas spots, with the nation’s supermarkets and department stores doing their utmost to outshine each other and make viewers shed a few soppy seasonal tears. one upon a time, it was the coca-cola Holidays Are Coming ad that officially marked the start of the festive season. But over the past few years it seems this spot has been grabbed by John Lewis. after last year’s multi-award-winning weepy The Bear And The Hare, we were on tenterhooks to

see what JL would come up with this time around. thankfully, it didn’t disappoint. the 2014 ad Monty The Penguin features an adorable cG penguin and a little boy called sam. Viewers follow their remarkable friendship and monty’s longing for love, until it’s revealed that monty is just a toy brought to life by sam’s imagination. the ad, created through adam&eveddB and shot by Blink’s dougal Wilson, is tailored to bring a lump to your throat. “it was a really great script, written by rick [Brim] and dan [Fisher] at adam&eveddB. i liked the idea of a very natural-looking penguin living in middleclass suburbia. and i didn’t really see the

end coming – but i’m often a bit slow with these things,” Wilson admits. “my main input was the series of scenes the boy and the penguin go through, and the style and behaviour of the penguin, which i was keen should be as natural as possible, like something from Frozen Planet. i spent a lot of time watching antarctic documentaries.” another brand taking the tear-jerking approach was sainsbury’s, which combined its festive campaign with the centenary of WW1, recreating the 1914 christmas truce when British and German troops laid down their guns for a game of football. the ad, Christmas Is For Sharing, was created by amV BBdo in partnership

with the royal British Legion, and shot by rattling stick’s ringan Ledwidge. it’s told from the perspective of a young British soldier who gives his only treat for christmas day, a sainsbury’s chocolate bar, to a German soldier. the ad has proved to be controversial among viewers. many have been moved by the re-enactment, while others say it’s inappropriate to use the war for advertising a supermarket. here at shots we think the ad deals with the subject very sensitively and it’s great to see sainsbury’s doing its bit for charity – chocolate bars identical to the one in the commercial are on sale in stores in aid of the royal British Legion.

| Inspired 11

christmas round-up 5

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“Christmas is a special time of year when people come together to share simple moments and kindness,” says Mark Given, head of brand communications for Sainsbury’s. “We wanted to reflect that theme in our Christmas campaign through the lens of one of the most extraordinary moments of sharing in modern history.”

Strong work also came from Tesco, which chose not to go down the sentimental route. The brand’s Christmas ad, Lights On, is a refreshing break from the heart-wrenching stuff that has been produced by its rivals.

The ad, created by Wieden+Kennedy London with production from Sonny

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“We used 13 penguins, six Christmas puddings, eight 2D reindeer, nine 3D reindeer, six Santa faces, nine swans, 98 trolleys, more than a kilometre of rope lights, 15 Christmas trees and countless kilometres of electrical cable to connect it all up.”

London, demonstrates that the supermarket is just as excited about the festive season as its customers are.

Accompanied by a brass band cover of Irene Cara’s What A Feeling, the spot, directed by Guy Manwaring, shows families across the country decorating their homes (and even their boats) with festive lights.

The ad’s grand finale is a spectacular light show at a Wigan Tesco, engineered

by Immersive (who worked on the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony), and produced by Partizan.

John Munro, creative director of Immersive, says the display is a nod to those Christmas lights enthusiasts who

perhaps over-decorate their homes, but who help to make Christmas a real spectacle. “The opportunity to create a Christmas comedy stunt like this was really attractive to us, as it’s not often that humour is used on a project of this scale.

“We used 13 penguins, six Christmas puddings, eight 2D reindeer, nine 3D reindeer, six Santa faces, nine swans, 98 shopping trolleys, more than a kilometre of rope lights, 15 Christmas trees and countless kilometres of electrical cable to connect it all up.”

Other notable festive ads include Marks & Spencer’s Follow The Fairies, created by RKCR/Y&R, which features two fairies

spreading some Yuletide love, ensuring everyone gets the gift they want, and Mulberry’s humorous #WinChristmas from adam&eveDDB, showing a competitive family exchanging extravagant gifts.

However, we’ll happily admit it’s not only the UK that can make a decent festive spot. In the land of turkey on the beach, Aldi has come up with The Perfect Aussie Christmas. Created by BMF with direction from The Glue Society (Gary Freedman at Revolver), it shows the virtues of an Australian-flavoured Christmas, with barbecues and shrimps warming up the icy locals of a more traditionally Christmassy snowbound village. EA

12 Inspired | NEW WORK

GOING GLOBAL US

Taking feminism to heart TV & CINEMA American Heart Association Ceiling Crasher

ILLUSTRATION: CHRIS MADDEN

Deutsch New York is behind this powerful new campaign which starts as a triumphant tribute to the advancement of women in the battle of the sexes.

The spot first shows an actress in 19th century period dress, surrounded by laundry, ironing clothes. “So they say it’s a man’s world?” she asks, before the screen shakes and the woman and the set are propelled upwards, crashing through the ceiling to another era where she is then seen holding a drill, surrounded by other factory-working women. “Well, I don’t see anybody’s name on it,” she defiantly states.

The scenes continue to shift and the ceilings are crashed through as the woman next stands at a political rally then in a smart-looking corporate office.

That’s when the tone shifts and we find out that while women’s rights have increased, so too has their propensity for heart attacks and strokes. “Today women can do anything men can do.

And there’s one thing we’re even better at,” says the actress, before we’re told that one in three women die of heart disease and stroke. “It’s not just a man’s disease.” The impactful spot, with its influential twist, is directed by Christian Bevilacqua through Anonymous Content New York, with the ceiling crashing post production effects by MPC New York. DE

The Berlin Wall Of Sound is an acoustic reconstruction of the Wall. It’s 7m 32s – the time it takes for sound to travel the 155km of the original.

CANADA

#thisheadline istooslow ONLINE FILM john st.

Reactvertising Canadian advertising agency john st. is no stranger to a parody film. In 2010 it released Pink Ponies, poking fun at case study films, which won a bronze Lion.

That was followed by Catvertising in 2011, parodying the obsession with online cat videos, then Buyral in 2012, inspired by companies offering to boost web clicks for a fee. Last year it created ExFEARiential, about advertising’s infatuation with scare tactics. Now, in 2014, it’s brought us Reactvertising.

Based on events such as 2013’s Super Bowl blackout and Apple’s #bendgate – which brands such as Oreo and KitKat hijacked to advertise their own products – the film introduces a crop of john st. creatives who are adapting to the moment and seizing opportunities by being on constant alert. ‘Speedwriters’ continuously churn out copy regardless of its relevance and there are ‘sleep shifts’ so creatives never miss a thing in the all-consuming new world of immediacy. It’s another brilliant parody, lampooning “superfuckin-fast content production”.

“The films are something we fell into by accident but we have to keep doing them now because it gives us street cred, it’s fun and it also gets us commenting on the industry,” explains creative partner Angus Tucker. DE

SINGAPORE

Big shop of horrors?

TV & CINEMA IKEA Halloween Movie references in advertising don’t come much better than this homage to the famous hallway scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic The Shining.

Created by BBH Singapore to promote late-night shopping at IKEA with extended opening hours until 11pm, the campaign was released for Halloween.

Directed by Jordan Quellman and featuring a boy named Danny, who represents one of the film’s central characters, the commercial swaps an isolated hotel in Colorado for a dark and deserted IKEA store at night.

As the youngster zips through dimly lit displays on a small tricycle, pedalling can be heard, before creepy music, created by Fuse Adventures in Audio, drifts in and out of the continuous shot. “Fuse did an amazing job,” says Daphne Ng, agency producer at BBH who worked on the 90-second commercial.

The piece comes to a climax when Danny turns a corner and is greeted by what appears to be the spooky Grady twins from the movie, but actually it’s just his parents who want to go and pay before the 11pm shut off.

The campaign was probably the best piece of Halloween-related creative launched in 2014. “We aim to help clients make a bigger, more productive leap than they can elsewhere,” says a mission statement from Black Sheep Live, BBH’s production partner which produced the spot. RW

| Inspired 13

GLOBAL ROUND-UP

NEW ZEALAND

An unexpected safety message IN-FLIGHT SAFETY VIDEO Air New Zealand The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made

FRANCE

The GIF that keeps on giving OUTDOOR Netflix GIF Campaign We’d all agree that Netflix is best enjoyed at home under the duvet, but this winter Ogilvy & Mather Paris took the content from some of its leading shows and movies to the streets with a unique outdoor campaign utilising the modern GIF image.

“GIFs are part of the internet and pop culture,” says Ogilvy ECD Baptiste Clinet. “They communicate emotions and messages with relevant funny scenes. We thought it would be perfect to connect Netflix content to people’s emotions, interests and behaviours in this way and put its message in the consumer’s life. Being relevant was key, but people love to see their favourite content.”

Featuring iconic moments from popular titles such as Breaking Bad, Orange Is The New Black and 300, the moving images were placed in billboards strategically located around French cities, including Paris. Furthering the concept, the GIFs were responsive to factors such as the weather, time of day and current events.

The execution saw the first digital outdoor work launched for the brand and encouraged consumers to look forward to getting home to use the ever-growing on-demand service. As many as 100 different GIFs are planned to appear on more than 2,000 digital out-of-home screens at stations across France and in the Paris Metro, as well as at malls, in cinemas and in various other buildings from October to the end of 2014. RW

GERMANY

Remembering the fallen DIGITAL SoundCloud The Berlin Wall Of Sound soundcloud.com/berlinwallofsound It’s been 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and only seven since online audio platform SoundCloud was launched. That means most of the site’s users are too young to remember or weren’t even born when the draconian barricade was dismantled. To address this, the Berlin-headquartered company, based near the Wall’s original Todesstreifen death zone area, recruited agency Grey Berlin to create a poignant campaign utilising SoundCloud’s signature waveform player.

The Berlin Wall Of Sound is an acoustic reconstruction of the Wall.

It’s 7m 32s (the time it takes for sound to travel the 155km of the original) of deep and menacing tones mixed with original quotes from East German politicians, such as Heinz Hoffmann and Erich Honecker, along with additional soundbites from border guards, and sounds of marching, dogs barking, gunfire and wailing sirens.

SoundCloud’s characteristic sound wave visually reconstructs the shape of the Wall, with its infamous watchtowers.

The usual tags show not user’s comments but photographs and details of the Wall’s victims, killed as they tried to cross the border. The Berlin Wall Of Sound received almost 100,000 plays in its first 20 days online. RW

When is a Hobbit film not a Hobbit film? When it’s one of Air New Zealand’s increasingly epic safety videos, of course. The company, the self-appointed ‘airline of Middle Earth’ has made another in-flight safety video to celebrate both their obvious connection to the films, which are shot in New Zealand, and the impending release of the final instalment of The Hobbit trilogy, Battle Of The Five Armies.

In this film, called, fittingly, The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made, we follow two die-hard Hobbit fans as they board an Air New Zealand flight and find themselves sitting next to none other than Frodo, aka Elijah Wood.

A fantasy/in-flight safety film ensues which features fellow Hobbit actors Sylvester McCoy [Radagast the wizard] and Dean O’Gorman [Fili the dwarf], as well as an appearance by Hobbit-wrangler himself, director Peter Jackson.

The five-minute film, directed by Curious Film’s Taika Waititi, (who also appears in the film in Gandalf-esque garb, riding a giant flying eagle, natch) is a brilliant romp through Middle Earth and whets the appetite for the impending final instalment of the trilogy, while also providing an antidote to the usual boring safety videos we’ve all come to know and ignore. DE

Our journey around the globe starts with a safety message via Hobbit, crosses a reconstruction of the Berlin Wall and visits IKEA for Halloween, before crashlanding with a warning about US women’s heart health

14 Inspired | the source

THRILLS, SPILLS AND SPLATS Trained in illustration and now a director of both liveaction and animation at Colonel Blimp, David Wilson needs to connect his brain to a computer via modelling clay, became overexcited by the Godzilla trailer and is moved by a performance artist who does shocking things to tomatoes

What’s the best film you’ve seen over the last year?

What fictitious character do you most relate to?

God, a year is a long time! It was Giuseppe Makes A Movie the other week, I LOVED that. It’s a documentary about Giuseppe Andrews, who lives in a trailer park in California and employs the local residents and homeless people around him to star in feature films that he’ll shoot in the space of only two days. His process and the people he inspires, and the world he lives in is insane. His producer used to play bass for the Bee Gees! It’s like watching an uncontrollable creative tornado on the screen, with the added bonus of being absolutely hilarious. It left me applauding in the cinema, feeling inspired by the energy and passion Giuseppe has for filmmaking: even if his films turn out to be insanity.

When Charlie Bucket gets rejected by Willy Wonka at the end of Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory after getting caught out for stealing I relate to that feeling every single time. Oh man, it’s such a hard sinking in the stomach. It turns my insides just thinking about it.

What show/exhibition has most inspired you recently?

What is the most creative advertising idea you’ve seen recently?

I actually really liked the trailer for Godzilla.

When I saw it, I thought it was giving a lot of plot points away, so when I went to see the film, I thought I knew the main heroes; that a plane crash was a big part of it, that Godzilla was the only monster, and that Bryan Cranston was the star, all that stuff.

SPOILER ALERT – It blew my mind that within 30 minutes Cranston was dead, and that a monster that I had no idea would exist was ripping through Tokyo. I loved that the trailer gave none of this away.

What product could you not live without?

Pens.

What product hasn’t been invented yet that would make your life/job better?

A product that could directly communicate what’s in my brain to the page. Thank goodness I can draw! I’d also like to be able to work with a special clay that can directly communicate to 3D computer animation. I’d love to be able to build a model, then get the computer to insert an armature skeleton inside the model.

Working in 3D space on a 2D screen can be really tricky.

What’s your favourite website?

A bit obvious, but I’d actually have to say Vimeo. I’m sure I’ve uploaded something onto it every other day for the past month!

It’s incedible for uploading work-inprogress edits, animatics, treatments, and of course, the public facing showreel. Also their Staff Pick curation is good, plus, there are no ads, a good design, and a friendly community. A true diamond of the internet What website do you use most regularly?

Facebook. I’m better than I used to be, and only check it about three times a day at the moment. It’s my equivalent of smoking: my dirty habit. It’s bad as the feeds on the site have turned into a barrage of ads, links to bad Top 10 lists and stupidity. I don’t even enjoy it. Has someone started a counselling group for coming off Facebook yet? It’s surely only a matter of time. I need it!

What track/artist would you listen to for inspiration?

I’m currently responding very well to Thom Yorke and Atoms for Peace. Thom’s music has a neurosis and glitch-i-ness that fits very well with the mind set I want to be in for writing. Also, Todd Terje’s It’s Album Time is 100 per cent my album of the year.

Since moving to Los Angeles I actually haven’t been to many exhibitions at all. I’ve missed so many great ones in London. That is something that the UK has to offer that I miss. For example, I was gutted to miss the recent SPILL Festival of Performance in Ipswich. I went to it when it was in London in 2013 and the best art piece that I saw that year was at that. It was SPLAT! by The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein. That show was an insane spectacle: with headlinegrabbing scenes that included Lauren sticking a knife (the handle!) into her vagina and splitting tomatoes, and roller skating naked while peeing, but the shock barrier is actually something you break through very quickly, and you end up connecting to Lauren on a very raw, emotional level.

She also incorporates dance routines and acrobatics to huge pop hits, such as Nicole Scherzinger’s Poison. It’s a near un-explainable experience that leaves you feeling like you’ve had the most enjoyable time, but it is also gut-wrenching to the core and connects you [to ideas of women’s] over-sexualisation and vulnerability, and to Lauren’s strength. The only way to describe it would be to write an essay about it. It was pretty incredible.

If you could live in one city, where would it be?

Los Angeles.

Mac or PC? Mac. What’s your favourite magazine?

Little White Lies [film magazine].

Who’s your favourite photographer?

I feel like I’ve got to go for a classic here and say Storm Thorgerson. That vision and ambition in his work was (and still is) in a class of its own.

Who’s your favourite designer?

Whoah, well designer is quite a broad term, but I guess the first thing that popped into my mind was actually fashion, I’m still obsessed with Martine Rose’s Beer Towel patchwork collection from her Men’s AW 2013 collection. I’ve got one of the sweaters and it’s my favourite item of clothing, even though I hardly wear it because it’s so precious to me. Anyone reading this who knows how I can get hold of one of the INSANE bomber jackets or hoodies, let me know.

If you could have been in any band, what band would you choose?

It would be a band from the 70s or 80s, when there wasn’t so much pressure on touring. Actually, scrap that, I’ve got to say Tame Impala. Those guys are so sweet, and Kevin Parker’s writing is incredible. If I could go tour with them for a few special nights a year, that would be wonderful. S

“Has someone started a counselling group for coming off Facebook yet? It’s surely only a matter of time. I need it!”

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8 What inspires David Wilson: 1 Documentary, Giuseppe Makes A Movie 2 The photography of Storm Thorgerson 3 SPLAT!, The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein 4 Tame Impala 5 Thom Yorke and Atoms For Peace 6 Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory 7 Martine Rose’s Beer Towel patchwork collection, Men’s AW 2013 collection 8 Little White Lies magazine 9 The trailer for Godzilla

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“So I wake up every day looking for stuff that sounds challenging and intriguing – and that will hopefully make people laugh.

That’s what drives me.”

18 People | director profile

Making shorts with Sarah Silverman titled I’m Fucking Matt Damon sounds more like a party than a job and Wayne McClammy admits late-night comedy shows are a ‘blast’.

But, as Iain Blair discovers, the director knows about hard work too, and has ads, TV, four films and even gaming on the go

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photographs: Eric Blackmon

ayne McClammy doesn’t like doing interviews – so much so that, when he won a Primetime Emmy for the inspired song I’m Fucking Matt Damon (which he shared with Sarah Silverman and three others, and which spawned the viral hit I’m Fucking Ben Affleck), the director blew off all the press. “I just didn’t know what to say, especially as I really hate talking about myself,” he admits. “I just get nervous and I don’t like it. So it’s better to not even start.” With this in mind, what you are about to read can safely be filed under the rara avis category – the very first in-depth, freewheeling interview with the press-shy McClammy who, it happily turns out, is a big fan of shots and who, after several very large, neat vodkas to get him going (and it’s only 11 a.m.), won’t shut up.

We’re joking. After all, with a name like McClammy (“my ancestors were Scots-Irish,” he insists, as if that explains it), you’d better have a good sense of humour, along with the gift of the gab, and the comedy director has both in spades. And while the self-deprecating McClammy may be an even rarer avis in a town full of self-promoting gasbags who really don’t know when to shut up about their latest deal or project, the genial Texan with a sly wit and (an almost British) use of sarcasm has some great stories to tell.

As an award-winning director with Hungry Man – one of the top production companies in the world, with offices in Los Angeles (where McClammy’s based), London, New York, Rio and São Paolo, and a roster that includes Bryan Buckley, Kinka Usher and Jim Hosking – McClammy is one of the hottest names in the business thanks to such noteworthy spots as Hump Day, for Geico through The Martin Agency, Madden Season, for EA Games/Madden and Heat SF, and the sublime Man vs Machine, for Activision(Call Of Duty)/Mountain Dew and 72andSunny, along with campaigns for such A-list clients as Nike, Comcast and Skittles.

Just doing what Emilio does It wasn’t always thus, though, for the ambitious southerner with zero Hollywood connections. “My family’s from all over the south, and growing up I’d always wanted to make movies and be somebody,” he says wryly.

“But when you’re from the south, it’s just a pipe dream, really. Movies and Hollywood – they just don’t seem real.” But Hollywood reality intruded on his pipe dreams when he moved to Austin. “Weirdly enough, I was working

at this hotel, I was 23, and Austin was just blowing up in terms of film, thanks to locals like Robert Rodriguez and Richard Linklater.

Then Emilio Estevez came to town to shoot [and star in] this movie called The War at Home,” he recalls. “I got to know Emilio while he was staying at the hotel, and we hung out a lot together during the shoot.” After the film wrapped, McClammy had his epiphany; “I thought, ‘Well, if he can do it, I can do it’.”

Not one to waste a minute – or a sign from the gods of cinema, McClammy promptly “dropped everything” and, with some friends, set up an Airstream trailer with an edit bay and a bunch of early Canon digital cameras and got to work. Two years later, in 2002, he won an Audience Award in the narrative short category at the Austin Film Festival for Triple Threat, a self-fulfilling prophecy for the neophyte writer/editor/director.

He quickly parlayed that success into a live show pilot The Hyper Jackson Chamber, which comedy writers and stand-ups Bob Odenkirk and David Cross saw, “and they flew me out to LA, which was a big break,” he reports. “They’d done tons of stuff, like Saturday Night Live and The Ben Stiller Show, and they were really big supporters and helped me get established in town.” Through them, he met Jimmy Kimmel who was just starting his own late-night TV show, and McClammy was asked to do some short films for the show, shorts that quickly became hugely popular.

“That was a blast, especially for me as I grew up loving Letterman and all the late-night shows,” he says. “And to be right there at the birth of a late show was an amazing experience. Crazy days! Every night was a party, and it was just so much fun.” And the Hollywood dream-turned-reality only got better when McClammy met Sarah Silverman who was dating Kimmel at the time. “We became good friends, and I directed her show after that on

“…with the explosion of the internet and social media, you have to be diversified.”

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Wayne McClammy is inspired by…

What is your favorite ad?

I can’t say I have a favourite, but I’m a big fan of the work DirecTV has been doing over the last couple of years.

Consistently sharp, smart, clever spots that push boundaries.

If I could Tinder DirecTV I would.

What piece of tech could you not live without?

My phone? If I didn’t have a phone, people would be like who’s the D-hole with no phone? Can someone call Wayne? No, he doesn’t have a goddamn phone! Next thing you know, nobody wants to work with me and even if they did they couldn’t get a hold of me because I don’t have a fucking phone! So, my phone.

What product could you not live without?

Sonos [wireless hifi system].

What are your thoughts on social media?

Don’t love it in my real life, but from a work perspective, it’s been a huge asset in my career. It’s an extremely important tool – one that can champion your work as quickly as it can destroy it. Today’s audience is savvy and they want to feel like THEY found something special. So I’m a big believer in clever delivery and not overthinking it. If it’s good, people will share it. If not, you’re fucked.

How do you relieve stress during a shoot? Smoke like a Lebanese street vendor.

What’s the last film you watched and was it any good? Birdman.

What film do you think everyone should’ve seen? Birdman.

Star Wars or Star Trek?

Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan are both good fucking movies.

I’ll leave this nerdgument for someone else.

Where were you when inspiration last struck?

In my driveway, watching my 80-year-old neighbour back his vintage Mercedes out of his driveway, through his bushes, off the curb, and down the street. Not giving a shit is pretty inspiring.

If you weren’t doing the job you do now, what job would you like to do? Is Anthony Bourdain [US chef and TV personality] a job? If so, I would like to Anthony Bourdain.

Tell us one thing about yourself that most people won’t know.

My first name is Derold. Go ahead, have fun.

Comedy Central for several seasons,” he notes. He also directed such TV movies as Big Night Of Stars in 2008 and, the following year, Boldly Going Nowhere. He recently shot another short with Silverman titled Sarah Silverman is Visited by Jesus Christ.

The hookup with Hungry Man came about after McClammy specifically asked his agent “to reach out and let them know I was a big fan of their team”. He reports that it was “a pretty quick match. My sensibilities meshed well with theirs, and it’s just a really creative, fun group to be a part of”.

At time of going to press, McClammy was starting another big campaign for Geico. “It’s an epic and a continuation of the Horror Movie spot we did recently. They’ll start rolling out in the new year,” he says. “And we did

another Call Of Duty gamer campaign, and those are always fun as you’re blowing shit up. And those video game worlds are a blast to play in as they’re not real worlds, so you get to push things visually, and there’s more room to be edgier and have stronger jokes.”

Tellingly, though, while McClammy has his hands full with current projects in advertising, movies (he has four in development), TV and gaming, he doesn’t set himself any boundaries or try to focus on a specific area to the exclusion of others. “I’m one of those people who really loves doing it all, so my focus is good work – in whatever area,” he states. “I write movies, I shoot commercials, I do TV shows, and I just look for good work that really interests me, and there’s good work on all sides. In this diluted market that’s grown so rapidly over the past decade, with the explosion of the internet and social media, you have to be diversified I think. So I wake up every day looking for stuff that sounds challenging and intriguing – and that will hopefully make people laugh. That’s what drives me.”

For McClammy, his love of commercials and advertising “gradually evolved over the years. Growing up, you always had those great, memorable commercials that were so defining for an era, and to me they still can be.

Some of the spots I’ve done over the past couple of years” – he cites Hump Day and Call of Duty [The Replacers and Man vs Machine] – “everyone knows. So from that perspective, it’s a lot of fun. And I care deeply when I do something, no matter what it is. I’m very invested in it being as good as it can possibly be, and I really enjoy doing commercials.”

He links that enjoyment back to his late night show roots with the Jimmy Kimmel Live! “The great part of doing that sort of TV is that every day is a new day,” he explains. “And everything is changing constantly, which is the fun part to me. It’s always evolving and moving forward, so from that perspective I love doing spots and trying a lot of different things.”

“You can get away with more now, and the viral nature of my spots has helped too.”

Everything is interesting, even if it’s shit In terms of his overall influences, McClammy is equally catholic in his tastes, even if he seems reluctant to single out specific names. “I know people have favorite directors and very specific inspirations, but I’ve always been inspired by a wide range of people,” he comments. “I really enjoy playing in different genres, and there’s a dramatic side to me and a super-playful side, like most people, and I like playing with all those things and combining them.”

Press him a little harder and he says, “OK, people who haven’t yet seen Birdman [2014’s black comedy directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu] really should. It’s a truly amazing film, one of the best I’ve seen in a long time.” So Inarritu is an inspiration? “Definitely, but then so is Wes Anderson or Linklater,” he notes, “Look at Bottle Rocket [1996 crime comedy and Wes Anderson’s directorial debut]. Living in Austin at the time, it was so special, and to this day I still think the protagonist Dignan is one of the most original characters ever. [Co-writer and star] Owen Wilson was so brilliant in that movie. I wish we had more of those types of films today. And then there’s a classic like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which is one of my favourite movies of all time. George Roy Hill was an amazing director. So I find that everyone is inspiring to some extent,” he adds. “And even when they’re bad, they’re inspiring you to not be bad,” he laughs. “I think everybody has something interesting – even if it’s shitty.”

As for his own style of shooting, McClammy says that he’s “pretty eclectic, and I think you’re now starting to see that there’s more room to play with

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1 Microsoft Titanfall, Shadow 2 Comedy Central, Back to Back 3 Comcast, Bold Explorers 4 The Great Schlep 5 McClammy on location in Oxnard, CA, shooting a new Geico commercial

Wayne McClammy Commercials representation Worldwide hungryman.com Key work • Geico Hump Day • EA Games/Madden Madden Season • Activision/Mountain Dew Man vs Machine • Microsoft Titanfall Shadow • Activision Call Of Duty The Replacers • Jimmy Kimmel Live! I’m Fucking Matt Damon

styles in commercials. Before, style was really driven by the bigger, more visual spots – and they weren’t comedy spots. But now you’re starting to see a world that’s a little more cinematic and grounded, and you can have a lot of fun.” Indeed, if you check out his reel, it’s soon apparent that he’s “all over the place” (his own words) – and proudly so. “I like experimenting with all kinds of styles, and seeing what develops. It’s not so rigid anymore, in terms of what you can do, and the internet’s changed that a lot,” he says. “You can get away with more now, and the viral nature of my spots has helped too.”

Talk about understatement. McClammy’s greatest hits, including Hump Day, have averaged well over 100 million hits a year – substantial numbers for ads and proof that the director has his finger on the pulse of America.

So what’s the secret of his success? McClammy puts it down partly to his total commitment to a concept and job. “Very rarely, if ever, do I do a spot for something I’m not a fan of,” he says. “It’d be very hard for me to take that on.”

The director, who’s shot several spots in Britain, including a big Microsoft campaign, and whose ads have played in the UK, was recently visiting Britain on holiday, but managed to find time to check out the latest spots on TV. “I wish we were a little more forward-thinking here in the States,” he says diplomatically. “I think you get away with far more in the UK and the spots can be much edgier. But the internet’s really changing the global culture,

and it is the future of comedy. You’ve got to keep moving forward, and I think the UK has done a beautiful job in that context. I love the spots there.”

No kissing and no brown sandwiches He says he’s always loved shooting in London, even when, for the Microsoft job, it had to double for Germany, France, Australia “and Texas, which isn’t easy to do there,” he points out. “But we tracked down this house outside London with a big deck and barbecue and backyard and it actually looked like Texas! I couldn’t believe it.”

McClammy also has fond memories of shooting No Kissing, a spot for the British Heart Foundation with Vinnie Jones (made for Grey London, it won several British Arrows). “It was a couple of years ago, it was so much fun to do, and the spot did really well – and ended up saving many lives,” he reports.

“My grandfather died of a heart attack, so I had this personal interest in doing it, and with PSAs you can really make a difference if people are willing to be clever. A lot of people are afraid to be clever and of the backlash, but I feel it’s the only way you can move forward.” His only gripe about working in Britain? “Craft services,” he says. “I love bangers and mash, but every day?

And those strange brown sandwiches everyone seems to love. I mean, what’s in them? I never did find out.” S

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22 People | director profile

Uncompromising director Aoife McArdle finds poetry and beauty in unexpected places – from Britain’s blighted backstreets to trailer parks in Californian desert towns – and draws authentic performances from amateur actors. This magic touch has made her the choice of musicians with a message and brands that want to pack an emotional punch. Having recently added commercials to her body of promos, the director tells David Knight that she always thinks her work could be better, despite her insistence on total creative freedom

“I’d only make a video for people who let me do my own thing. There are bands that I love but I’ll never work with; they’d put too much of a creative stamp on what they’d want to do.”

Aoife

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1 GAA, Major Moments 2 Wilkinson, Half Light 3 James Vincent McMorrow, Cavalier

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n Street Rider, Aoife (pronounced ‘Eefer’) McArdle’s new ad for Halfords, a boy cycles through suburban streets on his new bike, watched by other neighbourhood kids, and is then joined by his mates on their Christmas cycles. A sprinkling of snow establishes the ad’s seasonal flavour, as the young cyclists head towards the surrounding countryside. On one level, the cinematic sweep feels American, almost Spielberg-like, but the houses and kids tells us this is definitely the UK. With its indie-music soundtrack and bold casting and camerawork, this is an audacious Christmas ad. Its appeal lies exactly in its sense of authenticity. That defining moment in any young life – getting a bike for Christmas – is handled with appropriate import.

“It’s about how cool it is when you get a new bike – the freedom of that,” says McArdle. We’re talking in the offices of Somesuch, her production company home in London. “Everyone can recall being on your bike, and hanging out in your neighbourhood. And when my editor showed this to his son, he said: ‘Can we go to Halfords, dad?’”

Street Rider is clearly the work of a director with a profound understanding of the persuasive powers of film and this is the most high-profile ad she’s done so far.

She’s made fashion films for Diesel and River Island and directed a Scottish road safety ad, Wheels On The Car, last year. She has also just directed a commercial for GAA and Electric Ireland – another piece imbued with a real atmosphere of authenticity. But the authority to make the Halfords ad has largely come from her music videos. Since becoming a solo director five years ago (she was previously with the collective Minivegas), she has established an uncompromising and poetic style of visual

storytelling, based upon courageous casting, extraordinary locations, stunning cinematography and tight creative control.

Her best work includes her expansive portrait of economically deprived Britain for Little Comets’ Isles; her emotionally wrought videos for James Vincent McMorrow shot in a hard-bitten community in the Californian desert; and perhaps her most acclaimed work so far, the epic, existential journey of a skateboarder across the American West for Jon Hopkins’ Open Eye Signal.

Ferry’s dark tale and a sex scandal In the last few months McArdle returned to her native Northern Ireland to tell a story of romance blossoming on a big Belfast night out, for dance producer Wilkinson – and ran into big trouble with the local Catholic church. Her most recent promo is for none other than rock icon Bryan Ferry – who also gave her complete carte blanche.

“He said he didn’t enjoy being in his videos, which made me laugh, because he’s kind of a cool guy,” she says. “But I would only make a video for people who let me do my own thing, in a way.

There are bands that I absolutely love, but I’ll never work with – they would put too much of a creative stamp on what they’d want to do.”

For Ferry’s Loop De Li, McArdle has conjured a dark tale where privilege and decadence among youthful aristos leads to madness and murder.

It begins with a searingly dramatic image of a young man on a wind-blasted clifftop, in the aftermath of a terrible event. Then we go back to what led him there, his psychopathic tendencies, fuelled by being unable to deal with the hedonism around him. “For me it has this balance of beauty and darkness – I think a lot of Bryan Ferry’s music has that,” she says. “When I first heard the track

I wanted to create a video which reflected the sensation of swimming inside a twisted mind.

It’s a European cinema version of Englishness in a weird way. It’s got a lot of influences from movies [by directors] I really love – such as Pasolini, Antonioni, Polanski…”

If the video comes as a shock to Ferry fans, it’s unlikely to achieve the levels of outrage inspired by her video for Wilkinson’s Half Light a few months ago. The Catholic Church in Northern Ireland threatened legal action against the video’s producers unless they removed one of its most important scenes, in which a young man and woman have sex in a church. A week after the video first appeared on YouTube, the scene was cut. “I’d always wanted to make a music video in Belfast,” McArdle says. “That’s where I went out when I was a teenager. It has an incredible spirit, people are hedonistic in a great way there.” She says they had permission to shoot in the church, but (unsurprisingly) not for the scene itself.

“People may think I was trying to be controversial, but I was trying to show that young people in Belfast have moved on from the Troubles.”

McArdle comes from Omagh, a small town in Northern Ireland that, as she says, “is best known for bombs”, referring to the bomb blast in 1998 that killed 29 people at the tail-end of the Northern Irish Troubles. That long conflict was an ever-present backdrop to her childhood. “When I think about it I grew up through the worst part of the Troubles really,” she reflects. “I have so many vivid memories of that.”

She describes both her parents as creative people who never worked in creative industries.

Her father’s feats of storytelling were a big influence on her. “He always tells stories in a very cinematic way; stories from the Troubles, fantastic

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ones.” She did not inherit her father’s gift for the oral tradition, so she wrote stories down instead.

After taking a degree in English literature, she headed for film school in Bournemouth, England.

Here she met Luc Shurgers and Chris Wood, fellow students with whom she would form Minivegas, a directing collective that, shortly after they all graduated in the mid-Noughties, became something of an overnight sensation in the British music video world after they debuted with an animated video for Bloc Party’s Pioneers. McArdle started out as a writer, editor and compositor on the team that produced a steady stream of videos over the next couple of years. “We had fun, we learned loads, we were riding that wave of doing animation and post-heavy jobs, when you could actually make money because people didn’t understand what you were doing,” she recalls.

What happened in Minivegas...

“I wanted to create a video which reflected the sensation of swimming inside a twisted mind.

It’s a European cinema version of Englishness in a weird way.”

Minivegas had moved to London, and acquired an office in super-trendy Shoreditch, where, McArdle says, “It became a bit like Nathan Barley.” Then the group of disparate talents started moving in different directions. By now a director within the team, McArdle wanted to make films not necessarily driven by VFX, and it all ended in an ugly and painful split. One of the original members kept the Minivegas name, and the money. “The reality of it is it was fucking hardcore for a while,” she says. “So I literally started over again with nothing.”

But this necessary step to independence did bring artistic reward. In 2010 she made a video for indie band Little Comets, visualising the song Isles with an ambitious, impressionistic portrait of life in the UK. McArdle highlighted the hard times wrought by economic deprivation,

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1 Bryan Ferry, Loop De Li 2 Jon Hopkins, Open Eye Signal 3/4 Halfords, Street Rider

capturing people and their surroundings with honesty and visual poetry. “There wasn’t any money to make it, but I loved every minute,” she says. “At times you can connect with a song even if you’re not really into it. You can add something with the visuals that gives it new meaning. For me that’s what’s exciting about making music videos.”

The Isles video went on to win Best Video at the Rushes Soho Shorts festival in 2011, and although she then made some other, less gritty videos, it provided the launchpad for her intense, uncompromising cinematic style.

Existential skateboarding McArdle’s first serious foray into drama as both writer and director came with the video for Clock Opera’s Lesson No 7. Both character-piece and fast-moving action thriller set on London’s Thamesmead Estate, it established her penchant for existential heroes – in this case a young man who takes inventive revenge on the local bad guys, but pays a heavy price.

Arguably, Lesson No. 7 resembles a Western, albeit one set on a modern London council estate. But it was a film McArdle made in the real America, a year or so later, that helped her solo directing career gain real momentum. She wrote and directed Italy, Texas for Diesel brand 55DSL – a sweet, quirky, very cool mini-comedydrama about the eccentric ways of the animalloving residents of a small town in the Lone Star State, featuring the town’s real residents in a well-measured blending of fact and artifice. The film was nominated for Best International Short at the Raindance Festival in 2013.

One shot that had to be cut from the 55DSL film, when a boy on a skateboard grabbed the back of a truck for a ride (“He wasn’t wearing the

clothes”), was the inspiration for McArdle’s next video, for Jon Hopkins’ eight minute electronic epic Open Eye Signal. McArdle says she came up with the idea of the existential skateboarder on a seemingly endless journey through America almost immediately. “For me that was the nicest experience of having the vision for a video.”

She created a video treatment that exactly spelled out the finished film, and once Hopkins had okayed it she spent two weeks on the road in the US picking each location and each shot. The practical challenge of delivering this simple concept was huge. “You had to plan around light – it was quite mathematical that way,” McArdle explains. “To get that beautiful feeling of going through day and night but always hitting the magic hour.” The result is a mesmerising experience: a series of beautifully composed tracking shots that earned McArdle’s DP Steve Annis Best Cinematography at the UK Music Video Awards in 2013.

“I suppose the people who like the video identify with the idea of escaping,” she reflects.

“I think I do, I think it’s a bit of an obsession.”

She adds that she has “this claustrophobia, agrophobia thing going on all the time”, and if the Jon Hopkins video was the antidote to claustrophobia, her next video project, for singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow, was all about being hemmed in.

Having seen Open Eye Signal, McMorrow contacted her directly, asking her to make videos for three songs on his album Post Tropical. So McArdle wrote three connected characters – a boy, a girl and a mother – making a film about each one over three successive days, shooting in high temperatures in central California. Once again, the quality of the casting, the direction

of the talent and their relationship to their surroundings make for an intense watch.

In Cavalier a young man binges on booze, drugs and girls in a tawdry pole-dancing club, in reaction to a trauma that’s revealed at the end of the piece. Then in Red Dust the focus moves to the girl, inside her trailer, going through her own emotional torment, and who, in the central moment of the piece, genuinely shaves off her hair while her eyes well up with tears – the emotion is very real. “I try to get actors to bring their own experiences into it,” McArdle explains. “That’s sometimes a bit harrowing for them, because they will do it – especially American actors, they’re a bit more fearless about exposing themselves emotionally. And you share your own dark experiences to get them to that point too.

Otherwise it’s not fair, is it?”

The tragedy of a two-part trilogy Disappointingly the third part of the trilogy is now unlikely to be released, as McMorrow decided to change the third single to another song. “They were waiting for people’s reaction instead of being ballsy and bold,” says McArdle. “I felt sad for the crew because we’d all put so much work in.”

What with the McMorrow troubles and the furore surrounding the Wilkinson video – she describes herself half-jokingly as “Public Enemy Number 1 in Northern Ireland for three days” – McArdle’s progress in commercials this year has been comparitively smooth.

For Major Moments, her ad for the GAA Minor Championships sponsored by Electric Ireland, she says, that once again, she had free rein, rewriting the agency script to create an evocatively textured, beautifully shot celebration of Eire’s national sports of Gaelic football and hurling. “It was a

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aoife mcardLe

Aoife McArdle

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Commercials and music video representation Republic of Ireland antidote.ie Worldwide somesuch.co Key work • Bryan Ferry Loop De Li • Halfords Street Rider • GAA Major Moments • Wilkinson Half Light • Jon Hopkins Open Eye Signal

“We had fun, we learned loads, we were riding that wave of doing animation and post-heavy jobs, when you could actually make money because people didn’t understand what you were doing.”

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personal project for me,” she says. “I spent a lot of time on casting, and went to the dodgiest parts of Ireland to find the real guys. I felt passionately connected to the idea – a lovely experience.” She says there was also little compromise on her vision for Halfords. It’s all there in the final ad – even the music, created by her flatmate’s band. “[Agency] Mother were great, and they bought into the way I work. They wanted to make something that was very pure.” She found the untypical type of houses she wanted, and the surrounding countryside, in the small Derbyshire town of Chapel-en-le-Frith, and cast local ‘cheeky’ northern kids for the ad.

“I’m passionate about what I want, and when you’re working with an agency, you bring them in on that passion really early, explain why it’s going to be that way, and most people get it.”

The endless quest to improve Yet McArdle’s further immersion into advertising is probably going to be delayed for a while. Her first feature, written last year while she was laid up with a cracked ankle for a month, has now been greenlit by Irish independent film fund Catalyst.

Provisionally titled Kissing Candice, the film is “sort of a romance-thriller, with lots of characters”.

Set in Ireland, both Northern and Southern, it goes into production in early 2015. And before the end of the year she will have completed another music video, also to be shot in Belffast – this time for U2.

They are the next, important steps in Aoife McArdle’s intriguing directing career, which has already achieved great things, even if the director herself is never quite satisfied. “I’m not one of those directors who says ‘I’ve just made a masterpiece.’ I don’t think I’ll ever be like that. I’ll always be saying ‘How can I make it better next time?’ I think that’s what keeps you going.” S

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shots Awards 29

medals of honour

This year’s shots Awards was an embarrassment of riches. Sorting through the creative cornucopia of the last 12 months was quite a feat for our jury of industry greats.

But the results are finally in and here we present the shots Awards jolly good fellows for 2014…

30 shots Awards | introduction The Judges Thierry Albert CD, Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam Philip Andrew ECD, Clemenger BBDO Wellington Graham Bird MD of advertising, MPC Bil Bungay ECD, BMB London

“…highlighting these achievements is not only relevant but also necessary to show how creative thinking and collaboration can be a mutually beneficial experience for the brand and the consumer alike..”

I

t’s a funny thing, recognition.

We all strive for it. Whichever field we’re in, we all work to create something that others will appreciate, admire, love even. But often when recognition comes we are too shy, too embarrassed or maybe simply too magnanimous to accept it. There’s nothing wrong with that – no one likes a show-off – but the shots Awards is about celebrating the best and showcasing those people and companies whose grasp, on those all-too-rare occasions, didn’t exceed their reach, and no one should be embarrassed about that.

Creating affecting, interesting and engaging content is hard enough; creating it with a commercial message at the core is even more difficult, so highlighting these achievements is not only relevant but also necessary to show how creative thinking and collaboration can be a mutually beneficial experience for the brand and the consumer alike.

At shots, we like to think that we’re always shining a light on great creative work, be it in the magazine,

Marisa Clifford Founding partner & MD, Pulse London Pablo Del Campo Global CD, Saatchi & Saatchi Jérôme Denis Executive producer/partner, Wanda Paris Nicola Doring MD, HSI London Tom Ewart Founding partner & CCO, The Corner London

Danny Edwards Editor shots

Diane McArter MD, Furlined Los Angeles Tim Mellors Creative partner, Pointblank London Justin Moore-Lewy Executive producer, HēLō Los Angeles Andreas Nilsson Director Helen Pak Creative strategist, Facebook Flavio Pantigoso CD of innovation and content, FCB Mayo Peru Charles Petit Executive producer, Charles Paris Clive Pickering ECD, Dawson Pickering London

Andy Fackrell Regional CD, DDB Asia-Pacific

Trine Pillay MD & executive producer, B-Reel London

Danny Fleet MD, Hotspur & Argyle London

Frédéric Planchon Director

George Floyd Head of new business, Academy London

Rob Potts ECD, Saatchi & Saatchi London

Kim Gehrig Director Vincent Geraghty EVP & executive director of production, Leo Burnett Chicago

on the DVD or, daily, on the shots.net site, but the shots Awards is an annual step above. It invites the best work from across the globe and while it’s the shots editorial team that has the job of whittling down all of that great work to a selection of incredible shortlists, it’s then the unenviable task of some of the most creative minds from the global industry to choose between simply brilliant and undoubtedly the best, to find our winners.

And there is only one winner per category. Of course, as clichéd as it sounds, being on the shortlist is a huge achievement in itself, but the standard gold/silver/bronze approach is not for us, which is why winning a shots Award is no mean feat. And that’s the way we like it.

So, over the next 10 pages we will be celebrating our 2014 winners by asking them, variously, how they approach their work, what success means to them and why recognition is to be celebrated.

Elspeth Lynn ECD, M&C Saatchi London

Tony Granger Global CCO, Y&R Peter Grasse General manager, Curious Film Australia/New Zealand Ben Gregor Director Daniel Hennessy CCO, Geometry Global UK Aron Hjartarson CD, Framestore LA Colin Howard Executive producer/MD, Egg Films South Africa Chris Jones ECD, Zoic Los Angeles Davud Karbassioun Head of film, BBH London

Sajan Raj Kurup CCO, Creativeland Asia Russell Ramsey Partner & ECD, JWT London Steve Reeves Director Keith Rose Director Kath Sawszak MD, Marshall Street Editors London Alexander Schill CCO, Serviceplan Germany Ilya Stewart Executive producer, Hype Productions Moscow Andrea Stillacci Founder & president, Herezie Paris Suthisak Sucharittanonta ECD, BBDO Bangkok Stephanie Thomasson Art director, BETC Paris

Tony Kaye Director

Hugh Todd Creative director, Leo Burnett London

Amy Kean Head of futures, Havas Media

Carlo Trulli MD, Spy Film Toronto

Anné Kulonen Composer & sound designer

Ari Weiss ECD, BBH New York

Frederic Levron ECD, CAA Marketing, LA

Paul Weston Executive producer, Colonel Blimp London

Phil Lind CD and director Sophia Lindholm Art director, Forsman & Bodenfors Gothenburg David Lubars CCO, BBDO Worldwide

Jared Yeater MD, The Mill Chicago To see the full list of specific judges for each category go to shotsawards.com

Congratulations to the 2014 Shots Awards winners.

You are in good company.

A DIVISION OF

ENTERTAINMENT

Proud sponsor of the “Best Use of Music in a Commercial” category

greenlightrights.com

GL-NOAM-Shots AwardsPRINT2.indd 1

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| shots Awards 35

mobile campaign / digital campaign

Shortlisted

Credits

Android/KitKat partnership Easy Way Language Center Easy Way Lyrics John Frusciante Sat-JF14 Teatreneu Pay Per Laugh Three Mobile Sing It Kitty

Record Company Record Collection, Los Angeles Agency Loducca, São Paulo Creative Team Guga Ketzer, Cássio Moron, Fábio Saboya, Sérgio Mugnaini, Luiza Valdetaro, Nelson Costa, Raphael Franzini Programmers Adjetiva Tecnologia, Paulo Almeida Technology Director André Michels Satellite Company Interorbital Systems Film Production Record Collection, Jordan Tappis, Julian Chavez

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pace, the final frontier. These are the voyages of, well, former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante’s album, Enclosure. Our winning mobile campaign, from Brazilian agency Loducca, saw the meshing of music and space mission as the album was placed in a satellite and sent into orbit around the globe.

You could track the satellite on a special app and, when it was passing in range over your location, download the album to your phone. Ingenious

stuff, no? Our jury certainly agreed.

B-Reel MD/EP Trine Pillay thinks “It’s the most inventive, original idea in which the mobile platform plays an integral role.”

“We had to create a global campaign for an album release but we didn’t have access to the artist himself for any material or promo,” explains Loducca CCO, Guga Ketzer.

“So, this was the way we found to have him touring the world, connecting with his fans and at

Shortlisted

Credits

Google+ Front Row

Agencies 72andSunny Amsterdam, Google Creative Lab Digital Production Company MediaMonks Amsterdam

Christie’s The Art People Beats By Dr Dre Realtime Pill Characters Pharrell Williams 24 Hours Of Happy Android/KitKat partnership SNCF The Most Serious Game Ever Old Spice Internetervention Bic The Universal Typeface Porsche 911 Rear Horsepower Google Night Walk The Times/The Sunday Times The Unquiet Film Series

T

he winner of this year’s Digital Campaign of the Year brought us a fantastic interactive voyage into the French city of Marseilles using Google’s renowned inventiveness.

“Night Walk was inspired by Julie de Muer’s Sound Walks project,” explains Patric Franz, art director at 72andSunny. “Julie wanted to make it easier for people to get to know Marseille, so she created a series of sound walks to guide visitors through

her city using Google Maps. While creating a film about Julie’s project, 72andSunny and Google Creative Lab spotted the opportunity to create an interactive version of Julie’s favourite walk, to open up Marseille to the rest of the world using the best of what Google has to offer.”

So they did just that, and created an immersive experience that impressed each of its users, including our judges. “The Google

Mobile Campaign of the Year John Frusciante Sat-JF14

the same time making the buzz needed for the album.

“The date of the rocket launch changed several times due to weather conditions, but the date of the album release was already set.

This was the first time we had created

a campaign where we had no control over its key component. In the end, we had the satellite up in space only two days before the campaign started. With another delay there would have been no campaign, just a regular press release.”

Digital Campaign of the Year Google Night Walk

campaign is able to capture the modern culture and climate of a centuries-old city. The inclusion of music, art and architecture creates a three-dimensional tour of the city.

It is a fascinating way to learn about and experience Marseilles,” says Zoic ECD Chris Jones.

Franz believes the progression of technology means even more is to come. “By definition, new media never gets old. As long as we keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible, our work naturally evolves with the constant advancement of technology.”

36 shots awards | beSt uSe oF animation / beSt uSe oF muSic Best Use of Animation in a Commercial John Lewis The Bear And The Hare

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hristmas comes but once a year. And for the last few years Christmas’s starter gun has been fired by John Lewis. 2013 was no different and The Bear And The Hare made creative waves everywhere.

Shot by Blinkink’s Elliot Dear and Hornet’s Yves Geleyn, its unusual

mix of stop-motion and traditional 2D illustration gives the spot its beautiful charm.

The directorial partnership was another factor in its success. “It was great working with Elliot,” says Geleyn. “We have similar tastes and we played off each other’s strengths.”

Best Use of Music in a Commercial Guinness Sapeurs

Credits

Shortlisted

Agency adam&eveddb, london Agency Producer anthony Falco Creative Team ben priest, aidan mcclure, laurent Simon Directors yves geleyn, elliot dear Production Companies blinkink, london; Hornet, new york Producers Kev Harwood, bart yates, James Stevenson bretton, Josephine gallagher, michael Feder, benjamin lole Director of Photography toby Howell Post Production blinkink Studios; mpc, london Editors Sam Sneade & ellie Johnson, Speade, london

Donstroy Dream Away John Lewis The Bear And The Hare General Electric Childlike Imagination Honda Inner Beauty Nike The Last Game Amnesty International Pens Hive Taking Care Of Business Lycra Lycra Moves You TalkTalk Winter Wonderland Cravendale Barry The Biscuit Boy Kenco Tattoo

Dear agrees, saying, “We were paired up by our producers to strengthen our approach because we were fairly young directors, compared to the competition. It was a good idea too because the spot was such a mammoth project [and] working with Yves was easy. He never seems stressed and if he is you can’t tell.”

Judge Elspeth Lynn, ECD M&C Saatchi, believes “the incredible

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emotion captured, and not being afraid to go with an exquisitely done, old school execution… was absolutely perfect for this story.”

Geleyn says they made the spot “to celebrate the craft, more than anything else”, but both are happy that they’ve also won a slew of awards. “We should enjoy it while it lasts,” says Dear, “before we’re eclipsed by Monty The Penguin.”

Credits

Shortlisted

Agency amV bbdo, london Agency Producer Sara Flood Creative Team dave buchanan, nicholas Hulley, nadja lossgott Director nicolai Fuglsig Production Company mJZ, london Producer Suza Horvat Director of Photography alwin Kuchler Post Production the mill, london Editor Rick Russell, Final cut, london Music Finger music, london Audio Post Wave Studios, london Sound Designer parv thind

Heineken The City John Lewis The Bear And The Hare Three Mobile Sing It Kitty Old Spice Momsong Schwartz The Sound Of Taste Channel 4 Crabbie’s Grand National Baileys Nutcracker Guinness Sapeurs P&G Pick Them Back Up Johnnie Walker The Gentleman’s Wager Gatorade Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo

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here was one piece of music on the table for about three months,” explains Wave Studios’ Parv Thind, sound designer on Guinness Sapeurs, “but in the end it couldn’t be used. [So] Finger Music found a number of alternative tracks which were then narrowed down to just two.

We then spent quite a few weeks

editing both tracks to [see which] fit the picture the best.”

Sounds simple really, doesn’t it?

The final choice of track was The Heavy’s What Makes A Good Man? and its contribution to the finished piece of work can’t be understated.

“The music perfectly represents the spirit of the commercial [and] both

the visuals and the music have an enormous amount of soul,” says composer, and one of our judges, Anné Kulonen. “The strength and purity of the human spirit is a universal element, and this spot highlights that beautifully.”

Marrying strikingly bold visuals to an equally memorable track made

Sapeurs one of the year’s standout commercials. According to Thind, it was no easy job. “The decision was for the track to build with the middle part coming down, allowing for a crescendo at the end. Every way of editing the track was explored. At the very last stage the edit was tweaked to fit the track perfectly.”

| shots Awards 39

best use of sound design / editing company

Shortlisted

Credits

Honda Inner Beauty Original Source Purple Ginger Save The Children Most Shocking Second A Day National Autistic Society Sensory Overload BMW M4 Ultimate Racetrack Nike The Last Game Audi The Power of Small L’Oreal Feria Go Louder Lurpak Adventure Awaits Tesla Origins Visit Britain Sounds Of Great Britain Samsung Galaxy S11 The Match

Agency Wieden+Kennedy, London Agency Producers Michelle Brough, Danielle Stewart Creative Team Tony Davidson, Kim Papworth, Scott Dungate Director Smith & Foulkes Production Company Nexus, London Producer Tracey Cooper Director of Photography Mark Patten Post Production Time Based Arts, London Editor Paul Hardcastle, Trim, London Sound Design Factory, London Sound Designers Anthony Moore, Tom Joyce

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ow do you illustrate the beauty and practicality of a car using sound? Well, a good start would seem to be approaching the sound designers at Factory London, which is exactly what Wieden+Kennedy London did for their Honda spot, Inner Beauty.

“The sound design needed to bring warmth and humanity to the clinical process of slicing everything up,”

comments Factory’s partner and creative director, Anthony Moore, describing the commercial’s animated dissection of objects ranging from a golf ball to a snow globe. “With this in mind we began to design sounds that would tell a story around each object.”

Factory needed to be on top of its game to carry the trophy away and judge Peter Grasse, of Curious Film,

Shortlisted

Winning work

Cut+Run Los Angeles Final Cut London Trim Editing London Whitehouse Post Chicago Work Post London Whitehouse Post London

BetFair Octopus Booking.com Epic GiffGaff Halloween Guinness Made Of Black Guinness Sapeurs Halfords Needles John Lewis 150 Years John Hopkins Collider Lurpak Adventure Awaits McLaren McLaren vs The Nordschleife

H

aving an eclectic mix of work is, according to Dave Webb, Final Cut London’s managing director, what makes the job both interesting and a constant learning experience.

“As a group of creative individuals, the editors at Final Cut undertake a broad range of projects, from features to TV drama, music videos, shorts and, of course, commercials,” Webb says. “Editing is a real craft and you learn with each and every new project.”

Those projects include, in the last 12 months, a giant table-tennis playing octopus for BetFair, a celebration of 150 years of retailer John Lewis and a sartorial masterpiece for Guinness, to name but a few. “[This category featured] some tough competition from our fellow editing houses,” says Webb, “[but] that competition fosters creative excellence, and thus it’s a sign of a robust climate.”

There was tough competition

Best Use of Sound Design in a Commercial Honda Inner Beauty

recognised that was the case, saying, “Sound design is an integral and charming aspect of this Honda spot.

Even when separated from the moving image, these sounds both inspire and delight my imagination.”

“Sound design,” concludes Moore, “is massively important to any

project. It brings storytelling, emotion and a dynamic that can transport you to the heart of any narrative. At Factory we are very lucky to have clients who involve us early on in the process and allow us time to explore and experiment with sound design ideas.”

Editing Company of the Year Final Cut London

indeed, but Final Cut London’s work ultimately shone through. “I chose Final Cut London,” says judge, Hype Production’s Ilya Stewart, “because of the fantastic editing job on Lurpak and John Lewis and the two Guinness spots. In each case

the story is absolutely driven by the edit’s rhythm and tempo.”

According to Webb, “There’s an added excitement as this is a newly created category this year… It’s always a treat for us to see the craft of editing recognised.”

40 shots Awards | experiential/ambient out of home / branded content Experiential/Ambient Out of Home Campaign of the Year Volkswagen Eyes on the Road

W

e’ve all done it; head down, not concentrating while walking along, texting. That can be dangerous enough, but a far more serious issue is texting while driving, and OgilvyOne Beijing tackled this problem brilliantly in its experiential idea for Volkswagen. Using a cinema

audience as the target, the campaign mixes technological ingenuity with good old fashioned shock factor to draw awareness to the problem.

“Chinese spend at least as much time on their phones and online as others around the world, so online videos or WeChat mobile games

Branded Content of the Year The Times/The Sunday Times Bringing The World To Britain

Credits

Shortlisted

Agency OgilvyOne, Beijing Agency Producers Morris Ku, Rita Yang Creative Team Graham Fink, Doug Schiff, Kama Yu, Daqing Wang, Lei Song, Minsheng Zhang, Xufeng Zhou Director Eggtart Chow Production Company Answermark, Hong Kong Producer Avis Or Directors of Photography Alfred Pong, Jovi Lee, Alan Yip Editors Eggtart Chow, Morris Ku Sound Designer KK Chau

Watch_Dogs The Amazing Street Hack HBO Game Of Thrones: Ascend The Wall Pepsi Max Unbelievable Bus Shelter Volkswagen Eyes on the Road SNCF Europe. It’s Just Next Door The Pilion Trust Fuck The Poor Teatreneu Pay Per Laugh Harvey Nichols Sorry, I Spent It On Myself

are huge here,” says OgilvyOne China’s national ECD, Doug Schiff.

“Experiential or ambient work isn’t overly popular [in China] so they tend to work well as they usually create a good surprise.”

Our judges agreed, with Facebook’s Helen Pak saying, “I love this campaign because it’s such a powerful, yet simple, demonstration of bringing an issue to life [with a] great use of technology.”

The agency had a limited budget, so creating the all-important crash scene was a challenge, but a mix of live-action, CGI and “cranking the crash sound” did the job. “As soon as the on-screen message was seen and understood,” says Schiff, “there was chatter in the place, much louder than I expected.”

Awards mean a lot to Schiff because “They attract better talent… which couldn’t be more important.”

Credits

Shortlisted

Agency Grey, London Creative Team Phil Lind, Dave Monk Production Company Betsy Works, London Director Liz Unna Producer Rachel Roberts Executive Producer Peter Maynard Director of Photography Oliver Schofield Post Production Envy, London Editor Alex Lea

Axe Generation Astronaut Nowness Mine All Mine Samsung Maestros Academy The Kooples Today Tonight Absolut The White Russian Cornetto Cupidity: The Oasis Skype The Impossible Family Portrait Bombay Sapphire Exit Log The Times/The Sunday Times Bringing The World To Britain McLaren Tooned 50

SPONSORED BY

B

ringing The World To Britain is part of a larger branded content campaign called The Unquiet Film Series, which saw the creation of a series of shorts [ten, to date] covering elements of the newspapers’ “pillars on which the papers stand”.

A captivating campaign led by creative directors Dave Monk and

Phil Lind through Grey London, working closely with News UK and production house Betsy Works, the winning film features journalist Christina Lamb discussing her role covering wars on foreign soil.

“The idea,” explains Lind, “was to unlock the rich archive and history of these papers and bring them to

life beyond the words and articles themselves.” But of all the films in the series, what was it about Bringing The World To Britain that stood out?

“Christina Lamb is brilliant,” says Lind. “Not what you expect an OBE war journalist to be [and] Liz Unna directs beautifully, and I believe that’s it. There were four or five films

that were not made so who knows [what would be entered] when the entire series is available to consider.”

This piece of work stands out for judge Sajan Raj Kurup of Creativeland Asia, because “[it] blurs the lines between product, news, content, advertising and entertainment. You don’t mind spending time watching.”

| shots Awards 43

client / editor

Judging panel

Winning work

The shots editorial team

Axe Monday / Wednesday Axe Soulmates Axe Space Academy Axe Lily Allen Our Time Axe Peace Call To Arms Axe Business Cards Axe Show Her What You’re Made Of

T

his is the one category of the shots Awards that is chosen solely by the shots editorial team, with no outside votes from anyone else.

It wasn’t a straightforward choice as many brands have impressed us with their creative advertising credentials over the course of the last 12 months, but, equally, if the shots Awards had

existed for that long, we would likely have chosen Axe as Client of the Year at any point in the last decade, the company’s creative advertising has been so strong over that time.

But during this last year the brand and its creative partners have excelled themselves with the work they’ve produced. From the

Shortlisted

Winning work

Steve Gandolfi @ Cut+Run Joe Guest @ Final Cut Paul Hardcastle @ Trim Jay Nelson @ Cut+Run Peter Sciberras @ Method Studios Neil Smith @ Work Post

Lipton Be More Tea IKEA Beds Guinness Empty Chair AT&T Hurry Nike Hyperwarm Axe Peace Make Love Not War Sony Gliding Lights

W

hen Neil Smith is asked why it is he thinks he’s had such a creatively rewarding year, with a slew of fantastic spots under his editing belt, he puts it down to two things: luck and hard work. “Sometimes you get a string of jobs that just work out really well: script, director, agency and client all singing from the same hymn sheet,” he states. “And your job is simply not to mess it up.” Of course, that explanation overlooks

Smith’s obvious talent and expertise, a talent and expertise that the judges for this category saw immediately.

“Neil’s editing had the best sense of timing and rhythm,” commented Colin Howard, MD of Egg Films, South Africa. “Whether slow- or fast-paced, his edits always felt natural and unforced.”

Smith says that the key to being a good editor is seeing the bigger picture and listening to the agency,

Client of the Year Axe

usual, sky-high standard of TV commercials such as Soulmates, Monday/Wednesday and Call To Arms through BBH London, and Show Her What You’re Made Of out of Droga5 Sydney, to innovative and unusual ideas like Union Creative Toronto’s Axe business cards with integral pheromones or

the continuing genius of the multifaceted, Buzz Aldrin-starring Axe Space Academy campaign, Axe continually pushes creative boundaries and asks that their agencies do the same.

So, in the end, it turned out to be a rather more straightforward decision than we anticipated.

Editor of the Year Neil Smith @ Work Post

the director “and actually to anybody you show the work to. You don’t have to do what they say, but you should always listen.” Although Smith says that awards aren’t particularly high on his list of priorities, he’s equally

aware that they’re what can drive creative standards. “Even though clients are sometimes suspicious of motives, peer appraisal is a big motivator to do better work and we all benefit from that,” he says.

44 shots awards | teleViSion commeRcial / poSt pRoduction company Television Commercial of the Year Old Spice Momsong

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he Television Commercial of the Year category is usually a hotly contested one and this year was no different. There were 12 fantastic shortlisted pieces of work for the judges to consider from six different

countries, and among them were campaigns that had already gained deserved recognition from across the globe including Harvey Nichols’ Sorry, I Spent It On Myself, Proctor & Gamble’s Pick Them Back Up and

Post Production Company of the Year MPC London

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or the second consecutive year MPC London has picked up the Post Production Company of the Year trophy and, despite very stiff competition – including from their sister office in LA – it’s not hard to see why. Stunning and diverse work

for brands including IKEA, John Lewis, Lurpak and Three Mobile had the shots Awards judges handing out the plaudits, with BBH London’s Davud Karbassioun stating “[MPC has created] a lot of seamless but highly crafted visual effects, all of

Credits

Shortlisted

Agency Wieden+Kennedy, portland Agency Producers ben grylewicz Creative Team Susan Hoffman, mark Fitzloff, craig allen, Jason bagley, Jason Kreher, max Stinson Director Steve ayson Production Company mJZ, los angeles Producers diana cheng, Rob trent Post Production the mill, los angeles Editor Jim Hutchins, Hutchco, los angeles

Lacoste The Big Leap Volvo Epic Split New Zealand Transport Agency Mistakes Old Spice Momsong Nike Winner Stays Heineken The Odyssey Axe Soulmates Nike The Last Game Harvey Nichols Sorry, I Spent It On Myself P&G Pick Them Back Up Sky Television Come With Us IKEA Beds

Volvo’s Epic Split. But the winning spot came with a humorous song from a selection of mothers who had lost their little boys to the world of girls and dating.

“Old Spice,” sing the distressed mothers, “sprayed a man of my son, now he’s kissing all the women and his chores aren’t done.” It’s a brilliantly observed piece of comedy from Wieden+Kennedy Portland with

equally impressive direction from MJZ’s Steve Ayson, which is surely why this year’s judges felt that it deserved the highest recognition.

As David Lubars, chief creative officer of BBDO Worldwide and one of our judges stated, “It has an extraordinarily smart insight and it’s a fantastic execution. It made me jealous [and that’s the] best compliment I can give.”

Winning work

Shortlisted

IKEA Beds Samsung Coliseum Lurpak Adventure Awaits Channel 4 Crabbie’s Grand National Money Supermarket Elephunk John Lewis Never Standing Still Nike Play Russian Harvey Nichols Sorry, I Spent It On Myself Lacoste The Big Leap Three Mobile Sing It Kitty

Electric Theatre Collective London The Mill Los Angeles MPC London MPC Los Angeles

which contribute to the narrative.

You can sense that the post production team worked hand in hand with the director from the start to achieve the combined ambition.”

Graham Bird, MPC’s MD of advertising, knows how stiff the competition has been, and recognises the importance of collaboration. “There is a sweet spot somewhere in the midst of collaboration, great working relationships, outstanding artistic talent, passion and a great creative

SponSoRed by

idea,” he says. “On the practical side, having time to experiment with different creative solutions to a brief can also help to lead to an outstanding result.

“What makes life interesting at MPC is the calibre of projects across a huge range of platforms. Creative problem-solving has always been part of our business, but as technology evolves it becomes increasingly exciting – finding ways to marry our core VFX and storytelling skills with new ideas and technologies.”

| shots Awards 47

new director / director

Shortlisted

Credits

Alvise Avati George Belfield Vania Heymann Karim Huu Do Nico Kreis Diana Kunst Michael Lawrence Jabril Muse Joseph Oxford Martin Stirling David Stoddart

Record Company Columbia, New York Creative Team Vania Heymann, Natan Schottenfels Director Vania Heymann Production Companies Pulse Films; Walter Pictures, New York Producers Lia Mayer-Sommer, Stacy Vaughan Director of Photography Michael Belcher Post Production Artery VFX, NY Editor Danielle Katvan, Artery VFX, NY

New Director of the Year Vania Heymann

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avud Karbassioun, one of our regular judges, knows his stuff when it comes to new directing talent and he thought that this year’s shortlist was exceptional. Among that exceptional work, Vania Heymann’s promo for Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone, stood out. “This is far and away the strongest turnout I think we’ve ever seen,” Karbassioun says, “[and] the standout piece for me is

[Vania’s]. It works as a linear piece but the interactive version is fantastic and a great example of the opportunity of video online.”

As Karbassioun mentions, you can watch the promo as one pre-edited film, but at the dedicated website viewers can interact with the video by surfing 16 ‘TV channels’ in real time, with each one playing a different, full-length video directed

Shortlisted

Winning work

Lance Acord Tom Kuntz Andreas Nilsson Bart Timmer Martin Werner

Apple Misunderstood Subaru Nature Painting P&G Pick Them Back Up Firestone Pick Up General Electric The Boy Who Bleeps Turbo Tax The Year Of The You

A

gainst extremely strong competition, Lance Acord was, understandably, voted as our Director of the Year for a body of work from the last 12 months that any director would be proud of. And one thing that shines through that work is its emotional connectivity.

From a seemingly surly teenager in Apple’s Misunderstood to maternal pride in P&G’s Pick Them Back Up, Acord is the master at conveying true emotion. “For me it’s all about

finding a way to personally connect with the story,” he says. “Most of the projects I’ve taken on this year had at least one aspect that deeply interested me but, always, it comes down to emotional resonance.”

The judges in this category agreed, with Daniel Hennessy of Geometry Global UK saying, “No matter what the subject is [Lance] manages to capture the inherent emotion of each story and uses it to drive the narrative.”

by Heymann, allowing for infinite possible ‘edits’. Each ‘channel’ is based on an iconic American TV format, from shopping to cooking, and sport to chat shows.

“The video attempts to walk a thin line dealing with TV both as a medium and as a window through which we look at ourselves,” says Heymann. “By giving the viewer the ability to change the channel, we

transform the normally passive role into that of an interpreter. The hardest part was getting real TV shows onboard [recognisable faces and shows include Pawn Stars, Derrick Ashong, The Price Is Right, and eccentric Detroit rapper Danny Brown]. And lip-syncing. People had a really hard time lip-syncing Dylan – especially with this song’s unpredictable rhythm.”

Director of the Year Lance Acord

Acord says the most important factor in being a good director is believability. “If I don’t create a world you believe, you won’t feel a thing.”

As for receiving recognition for his

work, Acord is gracious. “It’s a community of people I respect. I often find inspiration in the work of my peers and it’s gratifying to think they might do the same.”

48 shots awards | pRoduction company / agency Production Company of the Year Blink London

Winning work

Shortlisted

Lurpak Adventure Awaits Second Chance Ban The Box Cravendale Barry The Biscuit Boy Halfords Cheaper Than A Favour: Gary Halfords Cheaper Than a Favour: Acupuncture Halfords Cheaper Than a Favour: Pose Halfords Keep on Rollin John Lewis Never Standing Still John Lewis The Bear And The Hare

Biscuit Filmworks London Blink London MJZ London MJZ Los Angeles Park Pictures London Rattling Stick London

SponSoRed by

W

ith a shortlist as strong as this, it’s no mean achievement to be crowned as Production Company of the Year, but Blink London has triumphed in 2014 due to an array of creatively inspiring work. Comedic spots for Halfords, epic work for

John Lewis and an envelope-pushing campaign for Second Chance all conspired to get our judges salivating. “Production so utterly captivating you want to watch it again and again,” said Havas Media’s Amy Kean, one of our judges. James

Agency of the Year adam&eveDDB London

O

ne of the reasons Ben Tollett, adam&eveDDB’s ECD, gives for being voted as Agency of the Year is that it is “not trying to be the best, not trying to be different”. Instead, what Tollett says the agency tries to

do is “what’s right for our clients”.

It’s working, with campaigns for John Lewis, Harvey Nichols and Volkswagen, to name but three, capturing both the industry and public imaginations and continuing

Studholme, Blink’s managing director, says part of the company’s success is simply because they “keep on keeping on” and that “to some extent we’re at the mercy of the health of the wider industry. If there’s great stuff out there to be made, we’ll try to make it.” That may be partly true but Blink’s roster and approach to creative advertising stands them in good stead. “We just follow what excites us,” continues Studholme. “With all parts of the

company working well we get to make things we couldn’t have imagined a few years ago.”

As for how Blink achieves its success, Studholme states that being relentless and diverse is key. “Treat every moment like it’s your first day in advertising,” he says “[and] offer diversity. I think there are lots of great ads around at the moment. Our industry is ingenious and protean.

Somehow, by hook or by crook, every year great stuff gets made.”

Winning work

Shortlisted

John Lewis The Bear And The Hare Lastminute.com Farrage Loves Europe Google+ Front Row Harvey Nichols Sorry, I Spent It On Myself Volkswagen Rope Volkswagen Cage Volkswagen Parachute

adam&eveDDB London BBH London Wieden+Kennedy London Wieden+Kennedy Portland

its fine run of form. “We’re just trying to do our best,” continues Tollett. “We don’t always get it exactly right but when we do, I guess it’s down to all the usual clichés, things like talented people, hard work, everyone working together… blood, sweat, tears and coffee. Oh, and luck. We’ve definitely benefitted from a bit of that.”

The jury might disagree with that last statement. Tim Mellors of Point Blank London, one of our judges, says “This is an agency with a point of view. Every ad is either sharp, funny or touching. Some are all

three. But more importantly, despite their light touch, they produce campaigns that are heavy on sell.”

Awards, by their nature, are rear-facing, but Tollett is positive about the future too. “It’s easy to be nostalgic about the past [but] ads today seem more vibrant, exciting and culturally important than ever.

Of course there’s poor work out there, just as there has always been.

But there are also lots of brilliant ads, and the best of these are grabbing headlines and being shared by tens of millions of people. It’s an amazing time to be in the business.” S

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Cesar Nunes CG Supervisor, Passion Nike The Last Game, nominee for Television Commercial of the Year 2014

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50 People | creative profile

a cultural cornerstone While he was joint ECD at Publicis London, Tom Ewart’s Mégane Experiment for Renault had the national press in a tizzy with its Gallic gall. He caused more tongues to wag when, in June 2011, he quit Publicis without another job to go to. Rumours rumbled on till finally in January 2012 The Corner opened, co-founded by him and three other ex-network names.

London’s fastest growing indie, it has produced exciting work for top clients, from adidas to Jigsaw, and fosters a culture of equality and collaboration.

Tim Cumming sits with Ewart in a corner at The Corner, ‘the place where people meet and things happen’

photograph: rankin

I’

ve arrived early for my meeting with The Corner’s Tom Ewart, pausing to soak up some early morning sun at the top of a little snicket off Dean Street at the back of the Soho Hotel. A nice little suntrap. A hotel doorman steps forward and asks if I’m ready. I’m not. A second man, with the build of a bodyguard, turns to the doorman and says: “He’s not down yet.” They turn away from me. There’s a chauffeur standing by; he’s not for me, either. These things happen when you’re standing on the corner.

I make my way to The Corner’s offices, climb the stairs to the first floor. They are expecting me, the boardroom set with a row of different waters and fresh-brewed coffee. About fifteen minutes later, Tom Ewart arrives from a meeting with his partners Neil Simpson, Neil Hourston and Graham Stewart. First apologies, then coffee, then we sit.

He chooses the high-backed soft furnishings in – where else? – the corner of the room.

“We’re spending more of our time talking about building a culture, not a company,” he says of their Soho morning pow-wow. “How we maintain that, and grow it, make it better, make it stronger. It’s a day-to-day process.” He sips at the coffee, adds more milk until it’s just the right grade of tan. “You can’t take anything for granted,” he continues. “You have to work at it. Put in processes and behaviours or opportunities to make it feel intimate and connected. Our ethos is that none of us are smarter than all of us” – it’s the keyline on The Corner’s website, after all, where creativity and productivity is about the collective, putting clever people round a table to solve

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“We’re spending more of our time talking about building a culture, not a company. How we maintain that, and grow it, make it better, make it stronger.

It’s a day-to-day process.”

52 People | creative profile 2

problems. “And how do you make that happen all the time, when you’re not in the room driving it, leading it?” he ponders, smiling like a magician about to unveil a trick – or someone who’s able to see around corners.

The Corner is now one of London’s fastestgrowing indie agencies, handling the accounts of, among others, London Pride, Jigsaw (‘style is truth, fashion is lies’ and a gorgeous print campaign shot by Rankin), adidas, Flybe and Coca-Cola. Since leaving his post as ECD at Publicis London in June 2011, and setting up The Corner in February 2012, Ewart has seen his start-up grow from five people and a blank sheet to a company of fifty spread across four floors in the heart of Soho. While there may be four storeys, the ethos of the company aims to act like a spirit level so that every type of expertise and talent, whether it be production, strategy, finance, coding, programming, writing or design all work together on the common ground, on the straight line of importance and impact. “It’s only ever about people,” says Ewart of the business. “There’s nothing else. It’s just the people. I always remind myself of that. It’s probably why we started in the first place, to have that blank sheet, to only bring in the people who get it. We’re not trying to convert, or turn people or change the ways they think. We only want to work with the people who get it.”

The pointlessness of an unmade idea Ewart’s mantra of open creativity means not sequestering the creatives away from the rest of the business – the being from the doing. “It needs more than good creatives to make great work,” he says. “You need great strategists who understand the motivations of the creative; you need tenacious business directors to sell the unconventional; and you need clever people to take an idea and express it in different ways and different places. I was always interested in bringing people from outside the traditional creative channels to work on ideas, to make those ideas better. That was something I started at Publicis, but here it’s been from the ground up, rather than bolting on to something that already existed.”

He points to the London Pride campaign as an example of The Corner’s on-the-level working methods. “We do classic long copy cross tracks and press ads, where we tell the story of the brand, and we’ve launched a social campaign on the back of that, where you tweet a photo of your empty pint and get a coupon you can redeem and they’ll

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“…to have that blank sheet, to only bring in the people who get it.

We’re not trying to convert, or turn people or change the ways they think. We only want to work with the people who get it.”

fill it up with a real pint. That, to me, is seamless. It’s connected. It’s the right thing to do, and there’s creativity in all of that. So massive respect to the whole team on that project, who worked out how we do everything – the redemption code, how that can work, how it can activate across Fuller’s pubs.”

Elevating the role of producers is one of the principles of The Corner, along with the fact that ideas – even the really great ones – are worthless unless they get made. “There’s no point having that empty pint idea stuck on a creative’s wall somewhere, or in my head, or in a bin,” says Ewart.

“Until it’s seen the light of day it’s not a real idea.”

There’s a malleable, shapeshifting method of thinking and working outside the usual boxes that defines The Corner and may help explain its expansion all the way down the main street of 21st-century advertising.

“People ask us what we are and we all say we don’t know,” he laughs.

“We’ve embraced the fact that we’re mercurial, we’re changing almost daily, and that’s based on what out clients require – and that changes. You think, that’s what we’re going to do, and then the next day we need to do something else. To me, that’s what a creative agency should be.”

AMV – the Real Madrid of creativity Ewart’s first agency work was at AMV at the end of the 1990s, on what was originally a two-week placement under Peter Souter. “I remember turning up and thinking, I never want to leave, this is it. I was there seven days a week. I worked out that if I always had an ad, any ad, that had been bought, at the end of my two-week placement they’d keep me for another two weeks.”

He smiles. “So I did that for another eight months. And in the end Peter Souter said, I’m gonna have to hire you.” He laughs. “So that was my way in.” The steps leading to that way in began with a course in graphic design at Kingston University. “I wasn’t even aware that the industry existed,” he laughs. “I thought brands did their own advertising.” He learnt otherwise when an ex-student came in to give a talk about working in advertising, and Ewart was the only one who stayed to listen. “It unlocked something in me,” he says. “and from that moment on I ditched graphic design, worked on my book, went to see the guy I’d met, Tony Snow, who worked at CDP, and I’d go and see him every other week and he’d tell me why everything I’d done was

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“You need great strategists who understand the motivations of the creative; you need tenacious business directors to sell the unconventional; and you need clever people to take an idea and express it in different ways and different places."

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rubbish, and we’d go out and have a drink. Each time, I’d learn a bit more, and I was so hungry to learn. He was an art director, and I locked on to that, had this unofficial training while I was still at college.” A pause, and a nod of acknowledgement. “So I owe it all to him.”

There was lot to learn, and Ewart was intent on soaking it all up, especially the criticism. After all, if you can’t stand the heat of being told what’s wrong with your work, you probably want to avoid working in the creative professions. “You’ve got to be open to listening and learning and be able to understand the help that’s being given you,” says Ewart, who recalls his 20-something self sitting on a train home, trying to unpick what Peter Souter or John Hegarty had said. “Like, what do they mean by that? Not to take it as rejection, but to understand what lies beyond it so you can go away and make the next stuff better.” It’s a method that again highlights the importance of collaboration, of working on the same spirit level. “A lot of teams I’ve seen since then take criticism the wrong way,” he adds. “It becomes personal, and that way, you’re not going to survive.” It was at AMV that he scored his first big hit with Rush Hour, the award-winning, roof-jumper BBC1 ident of April 2002. “It was an amazing place to be,” he says of AMV at that time, “the Real Madrid of creativity – Walter Campbell, Tom Carty, Steve Hudson, John Gorse, Nick Worthington. The line-up was incredible.”

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Making real-world connections

Driving The Daily Mail backlash all the way to Cannes Before the BBC1 ident fell in to his lap, he was with one of the agency’s young teams “waiting for dribs and drabs to tumble down”. Tumble down it did, and he wrote the script with Tony Cox in a day, got the green light while other teams had sat at red, and put himself firmly on the industry map with the athleticism of, well, a Parkour athlete. “We were nominated for five D&AD Pencils, and seven or eight national papers that weekend covered it,” he says, but it wasn’t the industry gongs so much as the word on the street that told him he’d scored a real success. “Two things happened – a lot of people were talking about it in what I call the real world, and it was nominated for a lot of awards. And it was the first time I got a sense that what was important was that buzz in the real world. I loved the fact that it had connected with real people and that they were talking about it.”

He recalls the roof-top shoot, and people coming out of their offices and houses to see what was happening, because there was no digital trickery involved – this was for real. This was an event. One false step could be fatal. “There was a lot of pressure on us for us not to do that,” recalls Ewart, “for him to jump using ropes and doing it in post, but then there wouldn’t have been a story.

He really did do these jumps, and you feel that in the film. It was the physicality of it. That was what really connected. And ever since then, I’ve been much more about hunting down the impact that can be made on the real world, and culture.”

That real-world connection with the general public continued at Publicis, where he memorably worked with director Henry-Alex Rubin on the cheeky 2011 Mégane Experiment, in which a Frenchman visited the glum Lancashire village of Gisburn to convince the inhabitants that their lack of joie de vivre was related to the fact that few of them drove a Mégane. Cue national emergency.

“The MG Owners Club threatened to ring-fence Gisburn to stop the advance of Frenchies,” laughs Ewart. But here’s another lesson in constructive feedback. “After the campaign launched, the client rang to say, ‘we’re getting negative criticism’. And I asked, who from? ‘The Daily Mail, Rod Liddle in The Spectator’. And I said, ‘brilliant – we’re selling Méganes to late 20- early 30-somethings, and if The Daily Mail says no, they’ll say yes’. So we took the quotes from The Mail and Rod Liddle, made them into ads and stuck them on the sides of buses.” The campaign won two silver Lions.

1/2 The Mégane Experiment 3/4 Beagle Street, Life Insurance: Reborn 5 BBC1 ident, Rush Hour 6/7 adidas, It’s Blue, What Else Matters?

Most brands and agencies would start hyperventilating at negative press, but not Ewart.

“You’ve stirred it up and provoked a reaction,” he exclaims. “That’s what it’s all about. People noticed it and were moved by it; some people loved it and some hated it, and I’d go for that every time, rather than just wallpaper.” The big lesson is that advertising needs to be a part of the real world, the world of events. “At its best it’s up there with the best books, the best films and the best games.

It becomes part of popular culture – look at the John Lewis Christmas film. The ambition should always be to be a real part of people’s lives, and whether that’s gaming or experiential or product or a fantastic TV ad, a piece of music, a club night – it’s always about trying to present the story in a way that people genuinely want to be involved in and be a part of.” S

54 Places | USA focus

CRIME PAYS

Since emerging just two years ago as the offshoot of a post house, Dirty Robber, has blossomed into a successful production and content creation outfit. It has produced a host of commercials requiring innovative solutions, including the Cannes Lion-winning, bacon-scented alarm clock for Oscar Mayer and an ‘upside-down’ ad for Axona shot on inverted sets. It’s also done promos, documentaries and narrative films, including the Oscar-nominated short Buzkashi Boys. As the company prepares to move into its flash new Hollywood HQ, Iain Blair talks to co-founder Martin Roe about how the robber stole the spotlight Martin Roe (left) and directing partner Nick Frew (right)

C

ommercials and music have always been happy travelling companions, so it makes perfect sense that LA-based production company Dirty Robber took its name from a song. “It’s by The Sonics, a 60s garage band from Tacoma, Washington. I’ve always loved the song,” says Martin Roe, the company’s creative director and co-founder. “Everyone seems to have some crazy name for their production company, it’s suitably silly and fun and dirtyrobber.com was available, so it was a done deal.” He admits that the company lawyers begged him to change it, “but they’ve given in now,” he says.

Dirty Robber started out as a post company six years ago, “but that company split off and is now called Coyote Post, and from that Dirty Robber was born about two years ago,” explains Roe. “We focus mainly on ads and long form, and we’ve done some 20 commercials in the past 18 months, including spots for Oscar Mayer (through 360i), Huawei (through Ogilvy, Hong Kong) and Hurley, who have their own in-house agency.”

“We call ourselves a content creation studio as we do a lot of different forms of media deliverables,” adds Roe who’s currently working on several big commercials, a high-profile Kobe Bryant documentary for Showtime and a raft of music videos. He’s also busy with the company’s move to brand new Hollywood offices to open at the start of next year. “We’re doubling our space to 10,000ft sq, it has studio and theatre spaces and high-end colour correction capabilities.”

From leaving Latin to loving LA Roe’s journey to running the successful company has been somewhat unconventional.

The Brit attended Oxford, “ostensibly to study Latin and Ancient Greek”, but got sidetracked by theatre. “I fell in love with it, then after university, I realised I wanted to be in movies,” he reports.

“I applied to USC [University of Southern California] in Los Angeles, as my mother was living in California at the time. Then I also fell in love with LA in 2001. I’ve been here ever since and still love it.”

After USC, Roe began working as an editor, and initially co-founded the company with a

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“[Advertising] is an amazing world where genius people come up with fantastic ideas, but don’t necessarily have any idea how to execute them. So it’s our job to take their ideas and make them work.” colourist, Charles Haine. “We were doing finishing solutions for people; everything from feature films for clients like MTV and Lionsgate, to TV work,” he explains. “We grew very quickly and were able to take on post services for a lot of TV and film.”

When his [first partner – TC] left a few years ago, Roe partnered with EP Chris Uettwiller, formerly the head of production at The Orphanage and before that, the head of digital production at GreeneStreet Films. “He was very interested in growing the company from a financial marketing side, which was never my strength. He’s great at client and financial management and has actually been the key figure in growing our commercial division.” One of the first projects the new partners undertook was a 29-minute drama shot in Kabul, Afghanistan, titled Buzkashi Boys, which received an Oscar nomination last year for Best Live

“We call ourselves a content creation studio as we do a lot of different forms of media deliverables.

We’re doubling our office space... it has studios, theatres and high-end colour correction capabilities.”

Action Short. It was directed by Sam French, who has two feature films in development and has recently finished a short documentary for the Afghan National Army called Afghanistan Rising.

Uettwiller was able to leverage the Buzkashi Boys’ success into the start of the company’s now thriving commercials business. “Chris got out there into the whole world of commercials and met all the agencies and reps,” notes Roe. “That was the driving force that got us our start, and it changed our fortunes pretty dramatically.”

Since that big break, Dirty Robber has

produced spots for such high-profile clients as Dell, Hasbro, Warner Brothers and Simon & Schuster. “I love doing commercials and we’ve worked with some really interesting creatives,” Roe says. “It’s an amazing world and system where these genius people come up with fantastic ideas – but don’t necessarily have any idea how to execute them. So it’s our job to take their ideas and make them work; to make something fabulous out of them. I love the challenge of solving these huge, unique puzzles on every job.”

Waking up to a pork product Other key creatives in the team include Nick Frew, Roe’s directing partner “and long-time best friend. He’s directed music videos for Pixie Lott, Mark Ronson and I Blame Coco, and directed spots with me for Hurley, Axona and Hyundai,” says Roe; plus Michael Younesi, the youngest creative on the roster, who focuses on children’s spots, producing over 30 in the past two years; and Andy Hines, who’s directed over 50 rap videos. Recently moving into commercials Hines has done spots for Sketchers, Baxter of California and is currently shooting a project for Gillette.

Roe notes that the company has been “incredibly lucky – especially in terms of the key partners we’ve worked with”. He cites 360i, the well-known New York digital agency, who they hooked up with very early on. Last year, Dirty Robber ended up doing a whole range of spots for client Oscar Mayer, a meat production company owned by Kraft Foods. “[360i] came up with these really crazy ideas about a device you could attach to your iPhone that you could set as an alarm,” he explains. “And in the morning, it’d wake you up with the wonderful scent of bacon wafting through your bedroom.” The campaign, named Wake Up and Smell the Bacon, not only addressed the bacon-alarm challenge, but ended up winning a silver Lion at Cannes, too (although maybe a silver Pig would have been more appropriate).

Roe also cites a big healthcare spot they did last year for agency Brandkarma and the Axona medical food product used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s , titled Upside Down. Directed by Roe and Frew, “it was pretty challenging because

of the huge scale of it,” he reports. “They wanted to illustrate the confusion of Alzheimer’s patients and how this product can help delay the onset of the disease. So the concept was that this person started on the ceiling of this room, with the whole world upside down, and then it gets reset to the right way up.” To solve the visual puzzle, the team built two separate inverted sets “with very complicated motion control and visual effects,” reports Roe. “It was basically a big cinematic challenge, and you have to approach jobs like that from an aesthetic, creative and brand point of view. It was a learning curve for me, but I find it really fun, plus you get to collaborate with so many talented people and great DPs.” The company is currently working on a major campaign for Kayak, “but we’re not allowed to talk about it yet,” says Roe, who’s also one of the company’s writers and producers. “One of my jobs is to help grow our roster and find new directors we can work with. And something we’re most excited about right now is that one of our directors, Andy Hines, has just landed a spot with Grey, but it’s another job we’re not allowed to talk about yet.” It’s a coup for a young outfit that isn’t composed of industry vets and insiders who have come from established companies. “It’s all very new to us,” admits Roe. “So we watched all the client’s spots, read up on Grey, did our research, and then it was very rewarding to land the job.”

Bryant’s big deal and branching out The company’s new sporting hero documentary, Kobe Bryant’s Muse, directed by Gotham Chopra and due to air later this year, is another coup.

“It’s a pretty big deal for us, as we produced this along with Kobe’s company,” reports Roe. “Kobe gave us incredible access for 14 months.” Dirty Robber has also worked on two indie narrative features released last year – Here Comes The Night, directed by Peter Shanel and Peter Kline, and Angel’s Perch, directed by Charles Haine.

“Most companies our size really focus on a very specific aspect of commercial production – such as comedy,” he sums up. “It’s the smart thing to do.

But we’ve been able to do commercials, narrative features and documentaries, and grow them all.” S

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in the depth of

Pierre Winther is an ideas man and, as he tells Lee Sharrock, unlike many photographers, he starts off with the concept, preciously guarding his creative freedom as he develops it.

Having produced arresting campaigns in both print and film for many iconic brands, the methods of this deep-thinking Dane seem to have served him well for over 25 years

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winther

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“My ambition is always to actualise an idea more as an art project, no matter if I do it on my own or together with advertising clients.”

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onsidering he is self-taught, Pierre Winther has fashioned for himself an enviably successful career, spanning close to a quarter of a century, working in film and print for big clients such as Diesel, Dunhill, Levi’s, Hugo Boss and Nike. Now based in the buzzy arts hub that is Berlin, he has also worked in most of the world’s creative hotspots; Paris, London, LA and New York.

Winther fell into photography in the 80s when he was taking a winter walk in his native Copenhagen and was pondering the best way to capture the long shadows. He soon got a camera and taught himself how to record such transient moments. That epiphany led to a long artistic journey as an autodidact, during which he has created his own unique style. His surreal images have appeared in The Face, iD, Rolling Stone, VICE and Vogue and traversed the traditional boundaries between commercial and fine-art photography. He has directed videos and shot covers for artists including Skunk Anansie, INXS, Tricky, Björk, Massive Attack and Beastie Boys.

Winther applies the same approach to his stills and film work, starting with an idea around a

scene, which he translates into a series of images or a film, or sometimes both. He laboriously constructs his stills by casting the perfect characters to live out his narrative, working closely with stylists and set designers to make his ideas come alive. Winther is with Radical Media for his film work and special projects, putting him in the company of some of the great auteurs of our time – Terrence Malick, Terry Gilliam, Ron Howard and Robert Rodriguez.

Probably Winther’s most famous image is Shark Riding, an idea he came up with for a Levi’s campaign in 1993. The photo spawned many imitations and found its way into the hallowed auction rooms of Christie’s. The immediate reaction when confronted with the unbelievable photo of a man gliding through the water on the back of a shark, is that it was Photoshopped.

That’s until you realise that Winther captured the image on Australia’s legendary Great Barrier Reef in the early 90s, well before Photoshop’s creation in 1998. I asked him how he did it. “I was contacted by Levi’s who were keen to build a world around a water-related subject that

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1 The Family Ride, JVC, Tested on Animals, 1997 2 In the Eye of the Beholder, 2002 3 INXS, Elegantly Wasted, 1996

promoted their new ‘shrink to fit’ jeans (which were an innovation at the time). I came up with the key visual of a man riding a shark and developed a whole underwater universe that drew parallels between the ocean environment and the dangers of the urban landscape. Levi’s loved the idea and commissioned me to carry out a three-week shoot on the Great Barrier Reef with a crew of more than 30 people. The model was a stuntman who wore only a small air tank on his back. When he was finally riding the 17-foot tiger shark I had a short period of time to get the picture and we were surrounded by guards taking care we wouldn’t get attacked by other sharks. It was all done for real and was pretty wild looking back at it.”

Winther’s approach to creating images for clients is not a conventional one and he likes

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1 Lunar Drive, 2008 Page 4 Backgammon of Death, Dunhill, The Challenge 2002

to communicate his inner vision with or without commercial diktats: “I sometimes compare my relationship to clients with the way an artist would function with his or her benefactor. My ambition is always to actualise an idea more as an art project, no matter if I do it on my own or together with advertising clients. I’m not a typical photographer who gets commissioned to shoot someone else’s concepts. I make exceptions if I like the vision. When you see my images you can’t really see a difference between free photography and commissioned work. I will collaborate with a commercial client only under the premise that they give me creative freedom – so it’s my vision that is portrayed in a photograph. This is the same as the approach for fine-art photography.”

His powerful imagery often possesses a cinematic quality, with a single frame offering

an intriguing narrative that draws the viewer in.

“I like to invite the viewer into my world, trigger something that is already in them and let them complete the narrative on their own,” he explains.

For example, the Backgammon of Death from The Challenge, one of two series of images and films forming the huge 2002 campaign for Dunhill Luxury, show two men buried in a desert with only head and shoulders exposed, playing backgammon. The Family Ride, from the Trust print campaign for JVC in 1997, depicts a man with a rope around his neck apparently about to drive off and throttle himself. Two other images from Trust display Winther’s talent for the visceral and shocking: On Fire for You, appears to show a burning person in the middle of a street; while Bomb Girl is an eerily erotic image of a topless woman with a bomb strapped to her chest: “I like

to portray the darker side of human behaviour and social messages. In the Trust series I wanted to display trust in a social context and Bomb Girl had already been taken in 1996, long before suicide bombing was so omnipresent in the media.”

Pierre Winther’s interactive [eh? checking] hardback book Nothing Beats Reality is a carefully curated selection of work from his oeuvre and takes its name from the working title for a project that saw him exploring old police documents, newspapers and medical reports. The stories he came across were so astonishing that the phrase Nothing Beats Reality became a mantra for his work as it summarised how real life can be even more bizarre and disturbing than fiction. S Nothing Beats Reality is published by teNeues in January 2015 with accompanying exhibitions planned for Berlin, London and elsewhere. www.pierrewinther.com

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evolution It’s 1991, as the USSR falls, modern Russia rises, along with an advertising industry comprised of a few inexperienced creatives trying to sell to a vast, fragmented country. shots talks to Moscow Mad Men about Soviet aftertastes, censorship and the startling growth of a very young scene

66 Places | RUSSIA

Marco Cremona is google-eyed with glee about his new role leading the tech giant’s marketing ops, its Creative Labs, in Russia. Here, the former Y&R Moscow ECD tells Carol Cooper about the the nation’s ad scene and his task to stimulate amour for the popular algorithm-muncher

for the love of google W

hen was the last time you had a good night out with your search engine? Dinner, a film perhaps, later at home you might whisper tender nonsense into its virtual ear about how you know it seems you take it for granted – just pumping it for info all the livelong day – but you really do love it. Like the protagonist of Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her, who ends up in bed with his operating system, it’s not just data you’re after but dating, too.

Google’s marketing teams, dubbed Creative Labs, are kean to encourage us to feel all soppy towards our digital tools – their mandate is ‘to remind the world what it is that they love about Google’ and this autumn, Marco Cremona quit as ECD at Y&R Moscow to join the mission, setting up a one-man team in Russia to represent Google’s EMEA Creative Lab. The Italian creative’s brilliant career has seen him work all over the world for major agencies.

Before his recent two-year role at Y&R Moscow, he was ECD at McCann Erickson – at their Moscow office throughout 2011, and in Milan between

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2008-2010. His long relationship with Y&R has included roles, between 2002-2008, as CD at the LA office then as ECD at their Milan HQ. Prior to this he held copywriting positions at Lowe in São Paulo, Milan and London, and at Leo Burnett in Milan. The latter was his first network agency employer after, as a 22-year-old he joined his father’s eponymous Milan-based agency, Albert Cremona, and learned the ropes as a copywriter.

As a boy he’d dreamt of being a “footballer, rock drummer or an author”, but advertising was written in his stars. “When I was a kid, my dad, who was a CD, used to take me to his office. Seeing him wearing jeans and a T-shirt, joking with colleagues in rooms full of colourful markers and weird sketches – it seemed like Disneyland to me.”

Top Tolstoy action and Nobel causes He took his career in Disneyland seriously though, studying communications and media at Berlin School of Creative Leadership then at Boston University and going on to work with Y&R for top clients, from Unilever to Land Rover. Between 2008 and 2011 he was President of Italy’s ADC and he’s bagged a slew of top awards. At Cannes this year he helped Y&R Moscow bag three silver Lions – The Life-Saving Cable for Nar Mobile won a silver in Mobile, while Movies That Change Lives picked up silvers in PR and Promo & Activation.

“Nothing matches the burst of sunny energy that great ideas bring me,” he says when I ask him for his personal career highlights. He lists three Lion-winning campaigns – Reveille for excite.com while he was at Lowe in 2000, the 2005 Telecom Italia spot Gandhi, directed by Spike Lee, while at Y&R and McCann’s 2011 Durex Lubes print ad Club Crasher. It’s interesting that he uses the word ‘sunny’ to describe his energy levels, as he seems an unfailingly upbeat type with just the sort of playful can-do attitude to suit Google.

As yet, Cremona doesn’t have any finalised Google work of his own he can talk about, but two recent campaigns from the Moscow base are the Russian reshoot of the Talk to Google spots for the Google App and a mammoth collaboration between Google and The Leo Tolstoy MuseumEstate; a 30-hour live relay reading of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Kicking off in Moscow’s state library, then travelling to other major cities around Russia and the globe, the recitation was performed in Russian by more than 700 people in a Google Hangouts conference and broadcast live on a Google+ page. The project typifies Google, not just for its innovation but for its wholesomeness, too. Indeed, when I ask Cremona what he wants to achieve in his new job he replies: “I’ll use an inspiring quote from one of my bosses, Robert Wong [co-founder and CCO of Google Creative Labs]. He says that if in advertising the highest achievement is to win a Cannes Lion, at Google we can aim for the Nobel Prize.”

Aspiring to be awarded for achievements that benefit mankind, rather than just agency success, is very much the company line. Famously founded by two uni dudes in a garage in 1998, the world’s biggest brand is keen to present a cuddly frat-boy face – to convey that it hasn’t moved far from its funky start-up roots. One of its London offices is called Campus, it plays April Fool’s pranks, the walls of its New York HQ bear such slogans as ‘all my shit’s online’ and Wong even urges his team to “Do epic shit”. Cremona and his fellow Lab dudes have been asked to “know the user, to understand the magic in our products and to connect the two”.

However, you could view the sheer scale of the company and its exponentially advancing ‘magic’ as some seriously scary ‘epic shit’. It’s worth an estimated US$395 billion, is continually amassing not just big data, but truly massive data, from the accumulated minutiae of our lives. It’s been

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Photograph: Ambrogio Cremona

marco cremona

“I will use an inspiring quote from one of my bosses, Robert Wong. He says that if in advertising the highest achievement is to win a Cannes Lion, at Google we can aim for the Nobel Prize.”

68 Places | RUSSIA assembling Earth’s biggest artificial intelligence lab, by hiring leading experts and buying up such companies as Boston Dynamics, which makes uncomfortably lifelike military robots; Nest Labs, which can render your home ‘conscious’ with its smart thermostats etc, and British AI startup DeepMind, which cost a tidy £242 million. The visionary computer scientist Ray Kurzweil, now Google’s director of engineering, believes ‘the singularity’ – the point at which man and machine will converge as computers achieve something like consciousness – can be reached in little over a decade. If anyone can achieve it, Kurzweil’s team will. The future in short, belongs to Google.

Hardly surprising that the corporation wants to reassure us with its products’ emotional, touchyfeely aspects. Stressing the human element, the man (and woman) rather than the machine, it has come up with such smart campaigns as its first TV spot in 2009, Parisian Love for Google Chrome, a genius boy-meets-girl tale told through keyword search terms, and the viral interactive campaign for Google StreetView in 2010, The Wilderness Downtown, which allowed users to create a music video set on the street where they grew up.

The simple joys of a Soviet aftertaste The Creative Labs’ practice of having small teams which collaborate with external agencies/creatives is particularly relevant for Cremona’s lone operation and he has “a pool of talented local and international agencies that work with us”. As most of the agencies in Russia seem to import foreign creatives, I wonder if the ‘pool of local talent’ is quite as deep as one would wish. I ask Cremona if the imports are about bringing in a more Western approach to the work, or if they’re down to a lack of marketing expertise in the country.

“The demand for talent in Russia is far higher than the supply,” he admits. “The positive side of it is that there are many opportunities for professionals. The downside is that often you’ll find a youngish copywriter who’ll advance quickly through agencies until he becomes creative director in just a few years. This is deleterious both for the agency and for the person, who doesn’t have the experience to lead a team and to establish a profitable relationship with clients.

Because of this, importing talent is popular, especially in management positions.”

I wonder if, after living in Moscow for three years, Cremona has come to understand the country that Winston Churchill described as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”.

“I’m far from understanding the Russian culture.

People are tough on the surface but often very friendly once you get to know them. A good way to describe them is that they are just like vodka: at first very cold, then very hot.” He is in awe, though, of the nation’s artistic, musical and literary treasures. “Russia has an unparalleled literary heritage. The best copywriters of all times – from Tolstoy to Dostoyevsky. It has everything to be the best creative country in the world,” he says. “Advertising is only 23 years old here and there’s still a long way to go, but though the local ad industry has been lagging behind, what it is showing in terms of potential indicates the end results could be amazing.”

Considering advertising is so young there, I ask Cremona if he notices any aspects of work left over from the days when there was no advertising, only Politburu propaganda? “We’re the sum of the experience we have lived so it’s impossible not to feel a Soviet aftertaste in modern Russia. And many times it’s a pleasurable taste, made of simple joys, windswept faces and melancholic souls.”

Of course it’s not easy to identify Russian cultural motifs in a country with 11 different time zones, a huge array of cultures, languages and peoples – from Slavic to Finno-Ugric, and a bewildering mix of mores, religions and buying habits. So how do advertisers meet the challenge of marketing to such a diverse country, which also has very different demographics between city dwellers and the rural population? “I see this as a great opportunity for Russian advertising,” he says sunnily, likening it to the Brazilian market.

“Having to communicate to the illiterate and Nobel Prize-winners alike, [Brazilian ads] often simplify the message and sometimes use just a headline-less picture, like DM9’s Cannes Grand Prix-winning Antarctica campaign for Guarana in 1993. Gandhi used to say that ‘simplicity is the essence of universality’. Also, sometimes companies split campaigns – delivering a more sophisticated message to the cities and a more mainstream one to the regions. Telco companies like Beeline, MTS and Megafon have done this, as they have such a wide range of targets to reach.”

The big bear and the golden Lions When shots last explored Russia’s ad scene in 2012, there was a sense that clients’ conservative, risk-averse behavior was hampering creativity.

Does Cremona see the same problem two years on? “It’s clear that the power of creativity in terms of economic impact can’t be ignored. Russian clients do understand this and many are now striving for better quality.” This attitude shift is

“Russia has an unparalleled literary heritage.

The best copywriters of all times – from Tolstoy to Dostoyevsky. It has everything to be the best creative country in the world.”

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paying dividends. In Cannes 2013, Ekaterinburgbased agency Vokshod won four gold Lions. This year Russia brought home its first Grand Prix with the MegaFaces Pavilion installation for MegaFon and then there were Y&R Moscow’s three silver Lions, for which Cremona is justly proud. “We developed The Life-Saving Cable for Azerbaijani telecoms company NAR Mobile. Azerbaijan has the world’s highest number of Thalassemic births and kids with this disorder need regular blood transfusions. To stimulate the act of donating, which is not popular in this Muslim country, we created a wearable cable via which people can donate battery charge from one phone to the other.” The cables were given away at Nar stores with mobile blood donation centres parked nearby. The campaign increased the nation’s blood donation rate by 335 per cent. “Movies That Change Lives [for Change One Life foundation] was another a social project that I will never forget for its impact both on the advertising community and on Russian society,” Cremona recalls.

“Potential adopting parents in Russia have to select orphans from an online national archive where they are presented with poor pictures and a one-line description. We invited 10 of Russia’s top directors to spend some time with a child, then write and shoot a short movie with that child as the hero. The ten heroes were adopted in under three months and the government agreed to collaborate in upgrading the national archive.”

Speaking of government responses, another challenge facing advertising in Russia is censorship. Television is the nation’s primary media platform, yet the state owns, or partially controls, two-thirds of Russia’s TV network and is keen to exert control. For example in 2012 it imposed a ban on advertising beer on TV. “There are some strict laws in place,” admits Cremona.

“Most ad agencies even have internal legal

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departments to specifically deal with these issues.

TV stations are pretty vigilant. An amusing example of this is that even when it was possible to advertise beer on TV, there was a rule that no living creatures could be shown. A Baltika beer ad got censored because although there was no human being depicted, at one point it showed a fish being barbecued and, because it was regarded as a living being, the fish had to be substituted with a fish kebab!”

The Yandex/Google face-off Though in 2012, Federal TV was Russia’s main platform, online advertising was beginning to develop. “Digital penetration is increasing and Russia now has the highest number of internet users in Europe,” states Cremona. “Mobile is playing a leading role and the only barrier still to be dealt with is the perception of high connection costs, which prevents many Russians extensively using the web on mobile.” Nonetheless, with 61.3 million internet users in Russia social media is becoming an increasingly attractive marketing tool, “Social media is a wonderful channel for campaigns with high viral potential,” says Cremona. However in September of this year Russia’s communications regulator ordered Facebook, Twitter and Google to join a register of social networks and agree to store data about their users’ communications on Russian servers or face a fine of 500,000 rubles (£6,763). Companies

failing to register within 15 days of a second order from the regulator will be blocked in Russia. It’ll be interesting to see how Google responds to this and Cremona was not in a position to comment, “As to new laws and regulations it’s difficult to make forecasts on how they will effect the industry, as it’s early days.”

But, notwithstanding state interference, social media is still attractive to advertisers, though it’s the national networks that are the most popular.

The two biggest are Odnoklassniki, which connects old friends and classmates and has 30 million users, and vKontakte (VK), Russia’s version of Facebook, which is the second biggest social platform in Europe, with 49 million Russian users. In the last year, VK has increased the number of visits by over 22 per cent, while Facebook has dropped by 18 per cent.

Worryingly for Google, another area in which a Russian product trounces a Western one is in search engines. Yandex.ru is currently Russia’s largest search engine, with 62 per cent of the Russian market – Google has just 27 per cent – and it has advantages over Google that look set to keep it in the lead for some time. Whereas in other countries Google has been able to lure users away from products like Hotmail, Mapquest and even Dropbox to use Google alternatives, in Russia, the Yandex versions of free email, live traffic maps, music, videos, photo storage etc are comparable to, if not better than, Google’s. Plus, having been created specifically for the Russian market, Yandex is also much better for searching its way through the highly inflected, grammatically complex Russian language, beating Google hands down when it comes to parsing user intent over spelling in a non-English search. Yandex is even

popular on Android devices and has now launched its own product for handset manufacturers, Yandex Kit, which enables Android to be used without Google and is seeing growing adoption.

So how does Cremona see Google’s chances of advancing on Yandex? His response is rather non-commital yet characteristically positive, “Yandex is leading the market and generally we believe that competition is great for the industry, as it stimulates companies to move quickly and develop new services, and gives users a better choice, which is just one click away.”

Making the ad before the product Though when I talked to Cremona he said he was still learning the ropes at Google, I wondered if he’d yet noticed a different approach to advertising than he was used to in his previous roles. “The beauty of working for the Creative Lab is that sometimes you really get to shape the future of the company. Let’s take the Google glasses example from 2012: the Lab was asked to imagine how the finished product – still in the prototype phase – would change people’s lives.

Creatives came up with the famous ukulele video and its content inspired the engineers to refine and enrich their original project.”

It sounds like a fun place to work and Cremona is definitely a good candidate for the role of ‘reminding the world what it is they love about Google’. So, as my all-too-human memory fails and I find myself asking my souped-up search engine for the zillionth time that day, where is my next meeting, what was that thing I ate in Tokyo called and what on earth am I doing on Tuesday, I realise that Google is kind of like a husband and not a bad one either. In return for a constant readiness to dispense endless facts, plus the comfort of him being the keeper of my history, all I have to do is turn him on. Bless. Google I do love you. S

70 Places | RUSSIA

After falling for both Russia, and a Russian, after a college trip, Tim Brown returned to Moscow in 1992 and forgot to go back to Blighty. Now ECD at McCann Moscow, he’s seen 20 years of huge changes in the country and its ad scene. He tells Emily Ansell how it’s now boom time for the bear

BROWN’S BEAR I

magine living out of a suitcase for six years, always intending to fly home but never quite finding the time or the will to book the plane tickets. That’s exactly what McCann Moscow’s executive creative director Tim Brown did after a long-distance romance led him to leave the UK and move to Russia.

Brought up in Surrey, Brown decided around the age of 15 that he was going to build a career in either tennis or art. His dad wanted him to be a civil engineer but his grandmother had a more artistic side and encouraged him to follow his dreams. “My gran was the artist of the family and she was very influential, but I decided that if I was going become an artist I wouldn’t have a great future,” says Brown. “I envisioned having no money and living on the backseat of a car.

So I thought, let’s study advertising instead.

I did a design course at Reigate School of Art and Design and then studied advertising at Berkshire College of Art and Design. From there, it was pure luck.”

It was while on his design course at the start of the 90s that Brown went on a class trip to Moscow and St Petersburg to meet artists and designers. He made lots of contacts there and,

as it was during the days before the internet, he became pen pals with a few of them and kept in touch over the ensuing years. Like something out of a romantic movie, one of those pen pals became something more and, after completing his studies, Brown travelled back to Moscow in 1992. “I never expected to stay there beyond the summer, but I thought the city was a bit weird and funky.

Advertising wasn’t really on the radar there though, it barely even existed,” he recalls.

Empty shelves and nothing to sell Finding himself low on money and with student loans to pay off, Brown took work as a designer at The Moscow Times followed by a position at a design agency. “The agency was in one of those huge Stalinist buildings and I had to cross Red Square every morning in the cold. It was quite a culture shock, Russia was coming out of the Cold War and there was poverty but I just thought it was such an interesting country,” says Brown.

Brown’s advertising break came from BBDO, where he joined the design team. He refers to it as a “weird little office” and says there were just three people working in the studio. The agency only had very minor clients, but Brown felt grateful

Coca-Cola, Coke@Home campaign

as he’d had heard that most of his friends from his student days were working as bricklayers or in other jobs which had nothing to do with advertising. “In the early 1990s there was almost nothing to advertise in Russia. You’d go to the shops and just see empty shelves. It was very difficult. In 1998 there was a financial crisis but before that you had the tanks shelling the Russian White House [the constitutional crisis of 1993].

There was a lot of unrest, so you kind of kept your head down and did what you could do,” he reflects.

“I thought there was no point in going home.

I had a job and was gaining experience.”

Brown found he was able to learn Russian quickly and that gave him a real advantage when it came to finding work because ad agencies were looking for people with a Western background and education who could bring something different to the table. “Being able to speak the language meant I was no longer living the ex-pat life, I was properly there. Other Westerners would come and go, but I was in it for the long haul.

Russia was changing so fast and it was like being on a train going somewhere exciting and not wanting get off,” he says. “I’d had no plan to stay there. I lived out of a suitcase for about six years because I was trying to convince myself that I would fly back to England. It then finally dawned on me that I was really living there and I needed to sort myself out,” he recalls. “England was stable; things weren’t going to radically change. I felt I could go back if I wanted to but I was gaining a lot more experience in Russia than I would at home. I was given much more freedom and everyone was experimenting because advertising was only just kicking off.

There weren’t so many established rules in the game. It was a lot of fun.”

After a year at BBDO, Brown left to take up an art director position at McCann Erickson

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TIM BROWN

Photograph: maryana titkova

“A lot of clients are now turning their heads towards Russia. It has one of the biggest markets in the world at the moment. It’s won a lot of awards in the past couple of years, loads more local stuff is being produced and the industry has been growing steadily.”

72 Places | RUSSIA

“In most [Russian] agencies there are around four or five foreigners but there aren’t many that have been there for more than 20 years like I have. People often have a love-hate relationship with Moscow – it’s quite heavy sometimes.”

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Moscow. He spent four years there before moving to agency Ark Thompson for a further four years, then he went back to BBDO where he was promoted to senior art director. Following BBDO, Brown moved into CD positions – firstly as associate creative director at Publicis Moscow for eight years and then swinging back to McCann where he is now executive creative director.

often have a love-hate relationship with Moscow – it’s quite heavy sometimes, it is a place that is full of contrasts.”

So what are some of Brown’s favourite campaigns among the sizeable horde of work he’s done over the years? He says it’s great to create award-winning campaigns, but the ones that really stand out to him are the ones where he has had a great relationship with the client. “When I was at BBDO we did a lot of stuff for Snickers.

That was a great brand to work on. There was a lot of freedom,” he says. “One of our Snickers commercials, Frisbee, actually ran in the UK too.

It was shot in Moscow and the UK market picked it up. That one sticks out to me because my mum saw it on the TV and was very excited. Before that, she was always asking what I’d done and never got to see anything. That was really cool.”

Another highlight for Brown has been working with Coca-Cola. He particularly enjoyed the Coke@Home campaign which included TV ad Red Fridge. “The campaign was for Russia, Eastern Europe and Africa. It was fascinating to work with so many different markets across huge continents in one go. I loved hearing all the different points of view and it was a great chance

Fun times with fridges and Frisbee During these many years in the industry, Brown has noticed a huge change in Russia’s advertising climate. It’s gone from being almost non-existent to becoming a booming industry. “A lot of clients are now turning their heads towards Russia,” he says. “It has one of the biggest markets in the world at the moment. It’s won a lot of awards in the past couple of years, loads more local stuff is being produced and the industry has been growing steadily.

“There were fewer agencies in the 90s. You could count them on both hands. Now there are so many agencies and it’s much more diverse.

In most agencies there are around four or five foreigners but there aren’t many that have been there for more than 20 years like I have. People

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to learn,” he says. “Rolling it out and doing the shoot was so much fun. They’re all quite different cultures and the only link was their Coca-Cola habits – the campaign was all about trying to get people to have the drink in the house. In America it’s in everyone’s fridge but in Russia very few people have it at home.”

When asked about the challenges of working in advertising in Russia, Brown’s list is very similar to that of creatives all over the world – budgets have slimmed down considerably and the internet means that people are expected to deliver quickly. “Budgets all over the world are tighter and people are being asked to do the same task for less money every year but, in a way, I think that’s a good challenge because in the early 2000s there was a lot of money in Russia and things weren’t done so carefully. Now, people try to make the most of every ruble and make it work better than it did before,” he explains. “Everything can be done immediately in the digital age. In the days when you just had fax machines, things happened at a much more natural pace and it was a bit more thoughtful. Now, that time for crafting has really speeded up.”

An old Russia hand Brown’s been executive creative director at McCann for two and a half years now and is feeling very settled. He’s working with huge clients including General Motors, Coca-Cola, L’Oréal and Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, so it’s not surprising to hear that his suitcase is now well and truly unpacked gathering dust in the closet. “The feeling I might come back to London comes and goes but to move back isn’t necessarily the right thing for me,” he says. “I’ve spent just over half my life in Russia now. I’ve stepped over the half-way mark and a lot of Russians tell me I’ve ‘gone native’.” S

74 Places | RUSSIA

As a teacher’s son from Kiev, Andrew Ushakov was bookish and geeky but he couldn’t settle on a hobby... until he got interested in advertising.

Now the Lion-winning ECD of Geometry Global’s Russian HQ, he tells Emily Ansell about his passion for his job and Russia’s bright future

From Kiev to cannes A

t the age of 14, Andrew Ushakov got his first computer. Not yet knowing what advertising really meant, he became fascinated with computer graphics and found a gig at a small design shop when he turned 16. It was then that his career journey began. Now executive creative director CIS [Russian Commonwealth] at Geometry Global, Ushakov has collected a healthy stash of awards for work with top clients, including UniCredit Bank, Metro Group, Praktiker, ItalMotors, P&G and Volkswagen Group.

Ushakov grew up in Kiev, Ukraine, the son of a school teacher, so he spent most of his free time in a classroom. “In a way, it kept me away from the bad influences of my neighbourhood – while most of my peers were out and about getting into trouble, I was reading books and being somewhat geeky,” he reflects. He says he “tried each and every hobby” but was never patient enough to stick with any of them. Advertising became the only passion that lasted more than a week and he thinks that might be why he married a fellow advertiser, Darya Ushakova, head of digital at Geometry Global: “So I always have someone to talk to about Volvo’s new TVC or the John Lewis Christmas campaign,” he jokes.

Ushakov’s first advertising role was as a designer at Leo Burnett Ukraine. He was soon promoted to senior art director but wanted a new challenge so joined Grey Ukraine as head of digital in 2009, later becoming a creative director at the agency. In 2013, he relocated to Moscow for

the role of ECD at G2, working for CIS countries.

However, when agency Geometry Global was formed from the merger between OgilvyAction, G2 and JWTAction later in 2013, Ushakov took the same title at the newly formed company. Less than a year after Geometry Global’s launch it has become one of the top 10 creative agencies in Russia under Ushakov’s creative lead.

The invention of inventivity When asked to describe the agency, Ushakov says his favourite thing about it is its inventivity (his own merger of ‘invention’ and ‘creativity’).

“We are not focussed on creating advertising for the sake of advertising or awards or spending the client’s budget,” he adds. “Our approach is to start from human needs – defining what it is that consumers lack in their lives – to inventing creative solutions that satisfy those needs.”

Ushakov says the highlight of his career so far has been creating the Get Well Kit, for SanofiAventis Group, which helps people to remember their medication. It takes the form of an iPhonecase which holds pills and links to a pill-memo type app. It won 14 global accolades, including a bronze Lion, and 26 regional awards. “It’s an advertising product that changes people’s lives,” he says. “It’s for the projects like these that we all came to advertising in the first place.”

He also references the Fat No More print campaign for Povna Chasha, a dishwashing liquid brand from Ukraine. He says the project’s

“Our approach is to start from human needs – defining what it is that consumers lack in their lives – to inventing creative solutions that satisfy these needs.”

main challenge was the creation of hyper-realistic muscular animals. “We hired Carioca [in Romania], one of the world’s best 3D production studios and together with them we had to learn everything about the anatomy of pigs, geese and salmon.” he says. “While we were working on the images I was on annual leave in Thailand, staying on a tiny island. So every evening I had to run along the beach with my laptop, trying to get a 3G connection to review the materials.”

Nearly two years have passed since Ushakov moved to Moscow and during this time he has seen many new advertising professionals emerging from Russia’s schools of creativity. He says the future is exciting because these young people see no limits, the world is their oyster and they refuse to restrict themselves to the Russian market alone. “It’s this kind of mindset that I seek in creatives,” he says. “And this is what will undoubtedly make Russian advertising great.”

Ushakov acknowledges that the advertising industry in Russia has only truly existed for a around 23 years, so it has had to go through the same development as Western advertising but 10 times faster. He believes that the process is still ongoing and the country “isn’t quite there yet”. “However, lack of decades in experience and advertising culture is compensated for by the burning desire to create great work combined with vast financial possibilities offered by the Russian market and enormous territory,” he adds. “Great advertisers will continue to erase the invisible line between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that separates the Russian creative industry from the rest of the world. As everything goes global, so will Russia’s advertising; we’ll continue to create amazing work, worthy of any client.”

He concludes with words of wisdom applicable to the Russian ad scene and to any determined creative: “Win or learn, never lose”. S

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ANDREW USHAKOV

Photograph: Taisa Finskaya

“…lack of decades in experience and advertising culture is compensated for by the burning desire to create great work combined with vast financial possibilities offered by the Russian market and enormous territory.”

76 Places | RUSSIA

Great Guns director Ilya Naishuller takes a break from editing Hardcore, a no-holds-barred action POV film that’s guaranteed to kick serious ass.

Simon Wakelin sat down with the director and Biting Elbows frontman to discover the Moscow native is one magnificently Bad Motherfucker

bloody good shot I

t’s not every day you witness a badass clip of carnage so gloriously inventive that you’re itching to see more. But such was the case as shots watched footage of new feature Hardcore in an editing suite off Sunset Boulevard.

The man behind this brutal, action-packed film that moves with such breathtaking velocity that it’s sure to give the viewer whiplash is Ilya Naishuller. Hardcore takes off where Naishuller’s music video Bad Motherfucker ended – in the midst of a mass of blood, carnage and mayhem as seen through the first-person perspective of a nimble, kick-ass protagonist. Currently in post, the film is due to be released in cinemas worldwide over the next 12 months.

In case you’ve been stranded on a comet (or been trying to land something on one) Bad Motherfucker is a first-person-shooter-style music video, directed by Naishuller for his own band,

Hardcore

Biting Elbows. The explosive video went viral on release, getting over 40 million views before winning a multitude of awards, including making the cut for the Saatchi & Saatchi New Director’s Showcase at Cannes Lions 2013.

Naishuller’s keen to make the most of the attention. “As soon as Hardcore wraps I’m eager to dive into commercials. There’s been so much interest, but I’ve been too busy on the film to reap any of the benefits.”

World’s first, motherfucker The idea of making a feature version of Bad Motherfucker can be traced back to RussianKazakh fantasy-horror film director Timur Bekmambetov. He proposed producing, with Naishuller at the helm. Naishuller initially turned down the offer, believing the idea far too gimmicky – but then he realised that if anyone

could make it work, it was him, and so the world’s first FPS action adventure film was born.

“It was an enormous challenge to go from a five-minute video on YouTube to a 100-minute feature on the big screen,” Naishuller says.

“Bad Motherfucker never had a story or a conclusion so we really needed to evolve the concept to make it work. It was a huge undertaking to get the right scope to engage audiences. I knew that you had to be one with the main character throughout the film.”

Pressed on whether he was inspired by any other films with similar perspectives in storytelling, Naishuller recalls the 1947 film noir Lady In The Lake, shot in first person perspective with old, heavy studio cameras and sub par production values. “The detective’s voiceover also breaks the willing suspension,” he reflects.

“That didn’t work, so I knew my main character in the film couldn’t speak.”

Unashamedly violent Naishuller says Hardcore is a modern action sci-fi story. It follows a newly resurrected cyborg who must fight his way through an endless stream of bad guys to save its creator from the evil clutches of a psychotic tyrant with telekinetic powers and an army of mercenaries.

It may be unashamedly violent, but then this is nothing new, especially in the FPS video game genre and its various incarnations over the years, from titles such as Doom, which offered players an arsenal of weaponry to fight demons and zombies to old-school Duke Nukem, which had ample violence and plenty of cursing, plus the ability to enter strip clubs and give dancers cash to remove their bras. The whole genre is far from PG-13.

Fighting alongside the cyborg is South African actor Sharlto Copley (District 9, The A-Team, Elysium). He’s the borg’s only hope of survival.

| Places 77

ilya naishuller

Photograph: Vasilly Bobylev

“It was an enormous challenge to go from a five-minute video on YouTube to a 100-minute feature on the big screen.

Bad Motherfucker never had a story, so we really needed to evolve the concept to make it work.”

78 Places | RUSSIA 2

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1 Naishuller on the set of Hardcore

Photograph: Vasilly Bobylev

2 Biting Elbows, Bad Motherfucker

“We needed a strong actor to play against the protagonist,” explains Naishuller. “I couldn’t see anyone else in that role – I wrote the part for him.

Sharlto received the script just three days before arriving on set. The experience became a great collaboration, he’s an amazing actor.”

Constantly reinventing The story takes place in Moscow over the course of one day. It’s the first feature film shot almost entirely on GoPro using a custom designed camera rig to capture a very natural and intensely personal experience. The equipment needed to keep the GoPro in FPP as it was being worn by stuntmen in lengthy, arduous fight scenes was continuously updated throughout the shoot.

“We created helmet and camera stabilisation using a magnetic system that allowed us to run and gun,” Naishuller explains. “We had a shitty prototype to begin with that looked like a deadly medieval device and weighed a ton. The shoot was essentially baptism by fire for all of us.”

One of the biggest challenges was maintaining a convincing flow of explosive action throughout the shoot. And no day was more challenging than the final day’s shoot, capturing the film’s climax on a bloody rooftop crowded by 100 villains.

“We sat down for a month hashing out ideas of how to end the film,” says Naishuller. “We came up with the most inventive kills, but on the day of

the shoot we improvised 50 per cent of the final battle. Improvisation was the only way forward on the film much of the time. It’s impossible to be so intricate and on point with so many stunts going on, plus set design was very specific because we shot in all directions on 360-degree sets. That was very tricky but necessary to successfully break that barrier with the audience.”

Editing was done on set in Premiere, with first assembly ready to view on the last day of the shoot. “We wrapped Hardcore at 5am on the final day on a rooftop totally drenched in blood,” Naishuller recalls. “The sun was rising and the crew gathered to watch rough sequences we’d cut. I just watched it there thinking, ‘Yeah, this is worth the price of admission alone.’”

He approached veteran editor Steve Mirkovich (The Passion Of The Christ, Con Air) to tighten the film’s flow. Familiar with energetic and high-octane material, Mirkovich was an astute choice. “All of his suggestions were fantastic,” Naishuller says. “I knew his credits very well, plus I needed someone who would cut the film and tell me it’s the best I’m gonna get.”

Guy Ritchie changed my mind The film was shot at 48fps in 920x1440 format before being cropped in cinematic friendly 1:85 frame. Naishuller says the high quality images garnered from the GoPros blew him away.

“Improvisation was the only way forward on the film much of the time. It’s impossible to be so intricate and on point with so many stunts going on, plus set design was very specific because we shot in all directions on 360-degree sets.”

“Digital is great and I’m glad it’s here. To be honest, Guy Ritchie changed my mind about digital with RockNRolla. Colour correction finally got to a point where I stopped caring about what the material was shot on. Before that, though, digital was annoying.”

I was a teenage studio slave Hardcore was shot entirely in Russia, where Naishuller is intimately familiar with its production scene. He began in the business when he was just a teenager, plying his trade in the studio system, working his way up to assist directors such as Roland Joffé.

“When I started I was a slave who brought coffee to people and drove the stars around,” Naishuller quips. “I was there because I wanted to understand the dynamics of what happened on set, plus I got to work with some incredibly talented people. The production scene is really good in Moscow. All my friends in advertising are happy. Russia offers diverse locations and sees a lot of production here.”

Speaking of advertising, Naishuller reveals that he was recently a juror at this year’s Clio Awards. “I was blown away by some of the work,” he admits. “I went through 400 videos for the shortlist and I was very selective with my choices. Thankfully, most of them made it through and got gold or silver. It was also nice to see Bad Motherfucker get a nod!”

But which part of Bad Motherfucker is more important to him? The music or the video? His career as a self-taught musician and frontman of Biting Elbows, or as a director itching to move into the ad scene?

“Film is forever,” he says, pointing his finger and lining me up in his sights. “Music? It’s a fling really. It’s just that it’s still going on but, hey, I have no complaints.” S

ONE MORE TAKE, PLEASE, EVERYONE!

At your service. Bazelevs www.bazelevs.com

80 Places | RUSSIA

When, in 1991, Mikhail Kudashkin, a translator with no advertising experience, was hired as CD at D’Arcy’s Russian office, the role took in car washing and unloading trucks. Now ECD at Leo Burnett Moscow, he tells Emily Ansell how the Russian scene has come a long way since then

mucking in at moscow hq “U

nless I am mistaken, it was Chateaubriand [François-René, the French writer, not the steak… obvs], who once said that the choice of profession is one of the most important choices one makes – and most of the time chance decides it all.”

These are the words that Leo Burnett Moscow’s executive creative director Mikhail Kudashkin offers when asked why he chose a career in advertising. This is apt, as Kudashkin studied linguistics at university, then spent seven years as a translator for RIA Novosti, the press agency abolished by Putin in 2013.

Photograph: Dmitry Jakovlev / typography: kirill sirotin

A phonecall changed everything Kudashkin was born in Moscow but grew up in Senegal where his father worked as a diplomat. At the age of 10, he returned to the Soviet Union and pursued his love of languages, French in particular.

But maybe there were already signs that he would become a creative, as he points out there’s a link between advertising and translation – both are about transposing a message into a language best understood by the recipient. In the portrait he sent into shots, see right, the words written on his face are samples of advertising jargon in three languages – Russian, English and French.

Of his move into ad land, Kudashkin says: “One Sunday morning, a friend called to ask how I felt about trying my hand at advertising. 1991 was the time when lots of things changed in Russia and in my personal life, I was just going through a divorce with my first wife, so I thought – why not?”

This friend was in charge of media planning at D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (later abridged to D’Arcy) and Kudashkin was invited in for an interview and test assignment. Despite having no advertising experience, he was hired as creative director two days later. “In spite of being worse than a rookie, my advertising career began with the title of CD. But for quite a while I would be

creative director and creative department in one.

The agency had just nine people, so everybody helped everyone, no matter what their position – I helped wash the office car once and when there was a pet food truck to unload (Mars and P&G were our two biggest clients), all hands were made available,” Kudashkin recalls. “At that time, we were mainly adapting international campaigns. But soon we felt we could do more to reach the hearts of our fellow countrymen, and started developing and shooting our own ads – with the likes of director Timur Bekmambetov

“In spite of being worse than a rookie, my advertising career began with the title of CD. But for quite a while I would be creative director and creative department in one.” who, long before [2008 US thriller] Wanted, helmed one of our first ads for Mars – Shopfitter.”

Unlike some creatives, who often hop from one agency to another, Kudashkin has pretty much stayed in one place throughout his advertising career. When D’Arcy’s Russian arm was swallowed

by Leo Burnett in 2002, he was offered the role of CD at Leo Burnett Moscow, and took it – being promoted to ECD in 2005. “There are only two agencies on my CV, one and a half even, if we keep in mind how many people from D’Arcy went to Leo. Agencies are all about people, right?

I was lucky to meet and to still work with some of the best people to grace Russian advertising and they are one of the reasons, if not the only reason, why I’ve never seriously thought of moving to another agency. I must be irredeemably loyal – but don’t tell my boss!” he jokes.

Looking back at some of his career highlights, Kudashkin picks out a campaign for Alyonka chocolate that took the form of a cartoon series centring on the little girl, called Alyonka, whose image appears on the chocolate bar’s wrapper.

Kudashkin explains: “This campaign resulted in a sales increase of more than 30 per cent. But a year or so later, it was put to a halt because... one of the shareholders suddenly decided that he hated cartoons. We made a few desperate attempts to save the campaign, one was to turn this fantasy world into a movie, in the fashion of The Flintstones, but it turned out to be too expensive and we lost the Alyonka account. After a couple of years’ hiatus, the animation was un-vetoed (don’t ask me the reason), so we pitched Alyonka again and won it back! Happy endings don’t come better than this, if you ask me.”

Russian advertising seeks identity Thinking about Russian advertising in general, Kudashkin says the country has become a strong player in the international arena and the number of awards being picked up at Cannes is increasing every year, but it has yet to find its own identity.

“Of course, if you compare what it was like when it all began in the 90s, with the current state of affairs, the progress that’s been made is enormous. But what we’ve learned is mostly how to imitate, even though the examples we imitate are among the best,” he admits. “For me, print – a visual, plus a caption or brand logo – remains the soul of advertising. That’s why I’d love this soul to find a Russian face one day.” S

| Places 81

Mikhail Kudashkin

“…the progress that’s been made is enormous. But what we’ve learned is mostly how to imitate, even though the examples we imitate are among the best.”

82 Places | moscow

Under the metres of snow that cover the city in winter, Ilya Stewart, EP and owner of Hype Productions Moscow, finds his car, fine cocktails, a few bears and a lot of buzz

going native: moscow What is the best thing about working in advertising in Moscow?

The fact that, as it is still a relatively new and growing industry, anything is possible. The sky’s the limit, and everyone is open to new forms of creativity.

And the worst thing about working in advertising in Moscow?

It’s a big challenge to get some clients to think outside the box.

What advice would you give to a visitor?

Beware of the bears that walk the streets, they’re everywhere! Do not engage in a drinking contest with a Russian. On a more serious note – don’t believe the stereotypes, Moscow is a very metropolitan place with a very pleasant crowd... for the most part.

What do you miss when you are out of the city?

The city’s constant buzz.

Life without it seems empty.

If you booking a hotel in Moscow, where would you choose to stay?

The Ritz-Carlton has the best possible view of Red Square, but Mamaison Pokrovka, in the quieter downtown district is great.

What is the best Russian ad you have seen in the last year?

I think Nike’s Play Russian campaign for their office here, by W+K Amsterdam, is the strongest work to come out of Russia in a decade. I am proud to have been involved in the project.

Who do you or would you love to work with in the industry?

I am lucky to be working alongside our directors, all of whom I respect and cherish greatly.

And the best place to drink in Moscow?

People associate Moscow with vodka shots, but there are some great places serving top cocktails. Saxon + Parole and the Denis Simachev Bar, to name two.

Although Hype Production’s opening party and temporary transformation into a bar gave them a run for their money.

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1 Saxon + Parole for cocktails 2 Andrei Tarkovsky 3 Finding your car in a snow covered city 4 Nike’s Play Russian spot 5 Mamaison Pokrovka Hotel 6 Uilliam’s restaurant 7 View of Red Square from the Ritz-Carlton 8 Warm summer days in the city

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If Moscow were a product what would it be?

An expensive wine. It’s an acquired taste and seemingly not for everyone, but once you figure it out, nothing will ever taste the same again.

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Where’s the best place to eat in Moscow?

Uilliam’s, which is an Italian bistro-style restaurant serving probably the best food in town these days.

“…don’t believe the stereotypes, Moscow is a very metropolitan place with a very pleasant crowd... for the most part.”

What’s Moscow’s favourite pastime?

When not working, looking for your car when the whole city gets covered in metres of snow in the winter.

Nothing beats the summer nights here, though.

One table, four places.

You and who?

Andrei Tarkovsky, Federico Fellini and Hitchcock.

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What’s your one-line life philosophy?

The best is yet to come.

What’s your favourite memory of Moscow?

Walking the city streets in the summer appreciating the warm weather here. S

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84 People | THE WAY I SEE IT

Greg Gray THE WAY I SEE IT

One day, a young Greg Gray walked out of his chemistry class onto a film set and he hasn’t looked back. The South African director’s gift for narrative, humour and pathos has resulted in a remarkable and diverse body of commercials, from emotional films such as The Reader for Bell’s Whisky to hilarious spots like Virgin Atlantic’s Love Story. Shyly admitting that the many awards he’s won – the Lions, Loeries, Clios and more – do matter, he talks candidly to Carol Cooper about his life and work, the South African scene and what he’s learnt from his brush with death

ILLUSTRATIONS: Justin Poulter

Greg Gray

| People 85

86 People | THE WAY I SEE IT

I wasn’t really a very good student at school.

I was not very driven, and was more motivated by my social life than gaining academic accolades or achievements.

Although I initially wanted to be an artist, I love what I do now and find it very fulfilling.

I think that I’m well suited to being a director.

If commercials were no longer an option for me, I would probably pursue a career directing long-form film or I would be a photographer.

Although I do have my pilots licence and was an avid flyer. I love aeronautics and would have loved to have been a helicopter pilot.

“My creativity is sapped by conflict and negativity.”

I was born in Johannesburg in 1966.

My earliest memory is from when I was three years old. I wandered off at the Top Star drive-in [open-air cinema] and mistakenly climbed into another couple’s car. My parents didn’t know I was gone until the couple returned me to them. Now that I think about it, I don’t know what this says about my parents. Perhaps it says more about the time we lived in then. Parents didn’t fret as much as they seem to these days.

My parents met at art school in the early 60’s.

They soon discovered that as young students with two children, their bohemian existence wasn’t putting food on the table, and they left the creative world for the corporate fields of IT and accounting.

Thinking about whether or not I had a happy childhood, I suppose I might have thought so at the time, but looking back on it, I had a pretty turbulent upbringing, with my parents separating when I was still quite young.

I don’t think I had any nicknames when I was a child. None that anybody chose to share with me anyway. When I first started directing, however, the crew I worked with used to call me Double-day Gray, because a booking with me meant lots of overtime for them.

I suppose I was artistic as a child and I naturally sort of gravitated towards that sort of stuff from an early age. However, I can’t recall being actively encouraged other than winning a couple of school prizes for art and drama and my school friends asking me to draw the outlines of pictures in their art books for them to colour in.

I ended up trying my hand at both law and medicine, until finally giving in to my affinity for the arts. I literally walked out of a chemistry class, onto a film set the next day.

My first job was sweeping floors as a PA in the film industry. I was working for Gavin Furlonger, an iconic South African photographer/director.

He’s still one of my closest friends.

I then ended up working as an assistant director. At the time, in the late 80s, the industry was small and undeveloped compared to the rest of the world, there was a huge demand for AD’s.

Giaco Angelini [director, cinematographer and head of South African production company The Vision Corporation], took me under his wing with the intention to develop me into his jack-of-alltrades location scout/production manager/AD. Giaco was one of my mentors. Working as his assistant gave me an invaluable education in many aspects of the industry, as I was involved in the production process from beginning to end.

Another mentor was Keith Rose [Velocity Films’ founding partner and director]. I got into directing commercials through being his assistant for many years. He was very generous in encouraging me to do my own thing and I built up a lot of relationships in the top agencies locally and abroad. TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris offered me a commercial for Tiger Tastic Rice [My Motha, 2001] on the condition that Keith would DP it for me. It was a very successful collaboration, and the beginning of my directing career. Keith continues to be a mentor and friend today.

When I began working in advertising, during the late 80s and 90s, the industry was driven first and foremost by creativity. Clients saw huge value in that and were brave and took risks. Idea was king; clients relied heavily on agencies and the process was very collaborative with directors and creatives being given a lot of freedom. The trend of global advertising hadn’t hit South Africa yet, and with very few directors around, the work certainly felt a lot more prolific. Also, commercial advertising focused on brand building with very little time afforded to retail.

Today, there seems to be a lot more involvement and control from clients in the creative process.

This may be the result of tighter budgets and people wanting more for their money, or it could be a result of pressure on marketing departments, but there is a danger of procurement and process strangling creativity.

In the early days of my career I was a bit of a control freak. I still am but not in the same way.

I’ve learned to be a little less overbearing and more collaborative and trusting of the process and the people I work with. But I’d say my greatest weakness is that I can be obsessive – stubbornly so – in fact if I could change one thing about myself it would probably be the fact that I am a perfectionist, which as good as it may seem can be a real Achilles’ heel.

In terms of the best advertising work I’ve ever seen, I don’t know if it’s ‘the best’ but I still love the Guinness work Swimblack from 1998 and Surfer from 1999, as well as the Stella Artois work done [the ‘Reassuringly expensive’ campaign] at the same time.

I’m not sure what is my favourite among my own work. The ad campaigns I have done since the beginning of my career vary quite a bit in style, from emotive to humorous, and from stylised to looser, more slice-of-life pieces.

Whatever I do I try to make it engaging. At the moment I am prepping two jobs, one is an international project which is an emotional father-and-son story, while the second is something completely ridiculous, hilarious and totally fresh.

I would hate to think I’ve done the best piece I will ever make so I’ll be optimistic by saying that hopefully my best piece of advertising is the next one.

I don’t think there are any brands or products I am dying to work on. I don’t choose work that way. For me the idea and the potential to expand it is more important than what the product is.

| People 87

Greg Gray

“For me the idea and the potential to expand it is more important than what the product is.”

Having said that success for the brand is paramount. Personal artistic fulfilment can be gained in your own time, at your own expense.

My creativity is stimulated by photography.

I find it very evocative and inspiring. I also like to travel and am inspired by new places – new visuals, cultures, smells, food. And I love French films. I find them very real and uncontrived, bordering on effortless. Jacques Audiard directed two of my favourite films, A Prophet [2009] and Rust and Bones [2012]. I also have a healthy appetite for Korean movies for similar reasons.

My creativity is sapped by conflict and negativity.

Thinking about how I like to use humour in my work, I don’t think that exploring the dark side in advertising moves products. Often with comedy, there’s a fine line between humour and darkness and the trick is to get close to the line but not to cross it. If I was directing features, though, I think that I would gravitate towards more serious subject matter and would display a darker sense of humour.

I would love to be involved in directing a TV series. There is such great writing happening in television today. I would really like to tell featurelength stories in film or TV drama. It’s all a question of timing, I do hope my time will come sooner rather than later!

I love working with actors. I have been very fortunate to have worked with amazing performers, including two Oscar winners.

[Jamie Foxx in the 2011 spot To The Masters, for Oudemeester, and Louis Gossett Jr in the Windhoek Lager ‘keep it real’ TV campaign].

At the risk of stating the obvious, for me the most important thing as a director is finding an actor who really feels like they fit the role. In advertising we don’t always get to work with A-grade actors so selecting the right performer for the character he or she is playing is crucial.

I have done a bit of acting myself, but luckily for you, nothing you’ll find on YouTube.

88 People | THE WAY I SEE IT

Similarly, I would advise a young person wishing to be a director, don’t just do anything for the sake of doing something. Choose carefully.

Do as much of your homework yourself as possible. Nothing beats throwing oneself into every aspect of a production from the word go.

This way you see things early enough to implement and include them in the process.

“I’d really like to say that awards don’t matter to me…”

When I was making The Reader [for Brandhouse Beverage’s Bell’s Whisky, through King James] I found that Brandhouse’s approach was to work from the heart, rather than ‘from the book’. I think it’s essential that you relate or connect with a script if you are going to immerse yourself in it for a month or two of your life. I have always selected my projects based on that self-fulfilment. It would be difficult for me to work on a project and give it my total commitment if I don’t resonate with it.

Music and sound design is as important to me as the picture. It really sets or compliments a mood or tone often even more so than the visuals.

I haven’t ever worked on a music video, but I would be very interested in trying to enhance a great track with evocative visuals.

I’d really like to say that awards don’t matter to me, but I always get a nice feeling inside when I win something, so I suppose they do.

I’m afraid I have Googled myself. I do care what people think about me – I wish I could say I didn’t but I’d be lying.

One of the best pieces of career advice I’ve been given was from Keith Rose. When I first started out, I was approached with a number of scripts and he advised me to be very selective. “Start at the top and then work your way up,” he said.

I think the worst day of my career was when I was shooting a Shield deodorant commercial, where we recreated an Indian bus journey over the Himalayas. We had 30 people strapped onto the outside of the bus which then had to navigate down a steep mountain pass. The brakes of the bus failed on the first take, but miraculously our precision bus driver brought it to a standstill a kilometre down the road. It was the most gutwrenching moment I have ever experienced; the end of that day couldn’t have come sooner.

If I could time travel I would like to take a walk back down memory lane to the 70s. I was very young at the time but I have a great affinity with 70s-style design and music.

My ideal dinner companion is my wife.

We met through work eighteen years ago.

It’s difficult to manage a balance between work and family life. It’s so easy to succumb to the all-consuming nature of our industry and there was a time I used to work long days, most days of the month – it was hard to see anything beyond that. But it can become counterproductive to the work you’re doing, and it comes to the point where it’s no longer conducive to creativity. Now it’s very important to me that I make time for myself, my family and friends, and I try to be disciplined about setting time aside for this.

I have a love/hate relationship with Cape Town.

It is a gentle place to live and has a rich natural beauty which makes it very comfortable, however it lacks the edge and fast-changing nature of some of the bigger cities of the world. You have to work harder at being less complacent, at being part of the world.

I guess I came as close to death as humanly possible. I was hit by a taxi while on my scooter and spent a month in a coma. The physical, mental, emotional trauma of the experience was huge, but it also put me in touch with my own vulnerability and fragility, and I took stock of my life. I guess it could very easily have had the reverse effect, but it gave me more perspective on my life, and what was really important. I think I am stronger and better for it.

I cry a lot. Soppy movies make me cry.

Sentimental ads make me cry. Homeless people make me cry. I am easily moved to tears.

The best day of my personal life was when my son was born. My worst day was one I’d rather not talk about. That’s how bad it was.

I always used to see myself as an extrovert, but feel less so as I grow older.

My main hobby is taking photographs. Being a great food lover, I also like to cook. It’s relaxing and creative and gratifying. I also go diving, fishing and walking.

My hero is my son, Ethan, who is studying to be a doctor at the University of Cape Town. He is an amazing young man who has taught me so much about kindness and compassion.

The thing that makes me most angry is unkindness.

Religion is both the greatest and the worst of human inventions.

If I was President of South Africa for one day, I would resign.

I always feel awkward when someone asks me how I would like to be remembered after I am gone, because regardless of what the answer is, it usually sounds pompous. At the end of it all, we’re just matter in a universe too huge to comprehend, and when life passes though us, we disappear back into nothingness.

At the end of the day, what really matters is love, friends and family. It sounds clichéd but really – that’s all that counts. S

Greg Gray Commercials representation South Africa velocityfilms.com Key work • Bell’s Whisky The Reader • Amstel The Chef • Amstel The Boxer • Oudemeester To The Masters • Cadbury Lunch Bar Voice Over • Tetra Pak Lightning • Virgin Atlantic Love Story • M-Net Birth • Dog FNB • MTN The Clap • Coke Bobby

90 People | shots tech

ludo’s people p0wer C

Starting out as a runner at Rushes in the early 90s, Ludo Fealy’s first intentions were to become a director.

But, as he tells Ryan Watson he soon became seduced by the ‘dark arts’ of post and, following glory at Rushes, Glassworks and MPC, the VFX supervisor has co-founded a post house intent on breaking the mold

limb the stairs to the fourth floor at Radiant House on Mortimer Street, home of nineteentwenty London, and you’ll be greeted by a welcoming open space, friendly smiles and a most excellent cup of coffee that would give the nearby Soho cafes a run for their money. Spend some time at the young VFX house and you’ll learn that the bulk of work on the company’s reel is just as tasty.

All of these elements could lead you to believe that it had been around for years but the fact is that VFX supervisor and co-founder Ludo Fealy only started the company with partners Scott Griffin and Chrys Aldred in November 2013 and has since completed notable work for clients including Canon, Cobra, Kia and the Haig Club whisky spot Together, which was directed by Guy Ritchie through adam&eveDDB and stars David Beckham, who also helped develop the brand.

ILLUSTRATION: NICKY FEALY

The post is about the people Speaking to Fealy about his wider career, it’s obvious that being schooled at some of the industry’s biggest players – Rushes, Glassworks and MPC – has had a big effect on the lifelong Londoner, who once had dreams of being an RAF pilot and a rock star before finding his feet in post production. “I got an interview and a job as a runner at Rushes in 1992 when I was 25,” he remembers. “I had aspirations to direct but when I got to Rushes it opened up to me a new world that I didn’t know existed. I didn’t have a clue about those places and that films were taken somewhere to be polished. I think people are more aware of it now but back in that time it was a bit of a dark art.”

Fealy remembers Rushes as an “amazing place to work”. It had produced music videos for the likes of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Billy Joel and he got to complete such acclaimed jobs there as the 1999 Ford Cougar spot Easy Driver, starring Dennis Hopper. He stayed for eight and a half years then moved to Glassworks, where he was encouraged to experiment with his craft. “There was the sense you could do anything”.

Spending the best part of five years at Glassworks, MPC was next to come knocking on his door and with a growing contingent of people he had previously worked with, including then head of production, Graham Bird, head of 2D, Bill McNamara, and colourist, Mark Gethin, for Fealy the move had an inevitability about it. “I got the best piece of advice during my time at Rushes

when David Campbell was managing director,” he reveals. “He said ‘post production’s the simplest business in the world. It’s just about the people. If you get the right people in you win and that’s it.’”

It’s something he’s kept with him and continues to reinforce his belief that having good staff will mean the work takes care of itself. “You can have the biggest, most posh place with all the kit you want but if you haven’t got the people there to attract clients it’s just not going to happen,” Fealy states.

In the case of nineteentwenty the right people are split between London and Bristol, the latter being where a bigger, separate office is based.

“It’s about three times bigger than London and the price of running it is cheaper,” he explains.

“The plan is to keep London relatively small but keep growing the Bristol office and the two are linked with a dedicated line.” The idea is to expand the Bristol operation and fill it with more creative seats to keep costs low and pass those savings on to clients. The company’s plan is to send people from London to Bristol because it’s important that it has the same standard and level of work that people have come to expect from the city. “I think if you’ve worked in post in London you understand what that level is and if you haven’t it’s going to be harder,” Fealy muses.

“Going back to how we learnt has to be passed on to someone. Once we’ve got that in place it’ll be easier to recruit in the surrounding area, because there is a good pool of talent down there.”

Nuke ways of working Walking around the London HQ’s suites reveals another way in which the company is keen to adopt new ways of working. It has invested in the ever-evolving Nuke Studio as opposed to Flame, which Fealy stopped using around three years ago. “[Flame] was a fantastic, robust system and changed visual effects when it came out almost overnight, but then I think they got carried away and unrealistic about the amount they were charging for software and maintenance costs,” he says. “It was just a numbers game; do we buy one Flame licence or ten Nuke licences and we opted for the latter.”

Just like its unconventional London-Bristol model, nineteentwenty could be considered somewhat of an innovator and it’s this fresh approach that is bound to continue its success. S

| People 91

ludo fealy

“You can have the biggest, most posh place with all the kit you want but if you haven’t got the people there to attract clients it’s just not going to happen.”

92 Insight | shots tech

KEVIN BROWN Managing director, Making, London

favourite kit 1

1 Techlink Recharge 2500 Portable USB Charger I went to quite a few weddings this summer and it became clear that people are pretty keen to be your mate if you have either a phone charger or cigarettes. God only knows what happens if you have both. The black market for either is insane. Either way, this thing holds its charge and is tiny enough to fit in a suit jacket pocket. Reasonably priced too.

2 Vestax Handy Trax USB Turntable

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Since I got my hands on this plastic piece of audio joy, I’ve been ploughing through a slew of old vinyl. It has a dreadful, tinny tone but having a handheld device has let me reappraise a collection of early 90s rave singles that’ve been languishing in my garage. Not a lot of it has aged well.

The most exciting thing about the Handy Trax was showing it to one of the junior members of the team. They didn’t know ‘how you put a record on’. Mind officially blown.

3 Uber

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I’ve only used Uber a few times, but people bloody love it. I think I enjoy watching people having their minds blown by Uber more than using it myself. I got in an Uber cab with a mate the other week and he was giddy with excitement. I got a live commentary about the glorious insanity of the Uber cab-booking experience in real time.

“Here comes the cab! He’s reviewing me! I’m reviewing him! It’s sooooo cheap.” Pure digital joy. If you want a smile on your face, get in an Uber cab with a mate and watch their happy little faces.

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4 Sonos

photograph: samuel jackson

We have Sonos in the office here at Making. It’s a source of passive-aggressive grandstanding, as most people have the ability to lob in tracks anonymously. This results in no end of shouty recriminations when someone bins the Taylor Swift playlist in favour of some challenging German electronica. What is meant to be a collaborative model of harmonious playlist curation turns into an aggro-fueled bunfight with people eyeing each other suspiciously. The app works, the hardware works and it provokes musical debate. What’s not to love?

5 Viking V711 dual-power 10-digit calculator This is a fantastic calculator that adds up numbers. It’s massive, it looks terrible and, consequently, has never gone missing from my desk. The Viking doesn’t even have the science keys on it. And people often come to the production desk and write the words 80085 in the liquid crystal display. Which is digital for BOOBS. It’s multi-layered.

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6 KORG iELECTRIBE Gorillaz Edition This is an incredible app. It’s the basic KORG beatbox in tablet form and comes pre-loaded with a ton of Gorillaz samples from their fourth album, The Fall. I tend to fire this up during the train commute home. In my head, I’m creating mind-melting remixes and contemplating my other career as a super-producer. In reality, I’m that tipsy guy in the corner making bleepy-bleepy noises with a miniature bottle of wine from Marks & Spencer.

A bit pricey at £14, but the most fun I’ve had on an iPad in eons.

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| People 95

NEW DIRECTORS

FANNING THE FLAMES The three new directors Ryan Watson has smoked out this issue are Adrien Servadio, a Flame supremo who’s helmed a duo of films featuring water and fire, Ish Sahotay, with his hot sushi buffet of bondage gear and body parts, and Ivan Barge, whose first film follows the slow burn of time Adrien Servadio SHORT FILMS Immersives Stardust

The post process traditionally comes at the later stages of a production, but when it came to Adrien Servadio’s filmmaking education, it was a starting point for him. “I was studying editing at school and had also started an internship in the French post production company AutreChose. [But then] I discovered this new medium and it seemed better suited to me expressing myself,” he states.

As Flame assistant, Servadio worked on commercials at production company La Maison, for clients including Heineken, Perrier, Peugeot and Jean Paul-Gaultier – all the while developing his desire to direct his own films. For the past five years he has continued as a visual effects magician at production house BUF, working on high-profile features such as 2012’s Dark Shadows. “I’ve collaborated on a lot of great films with great directors. This job demands creativity and I decided to do more to express my own vision.”

He recently signed for representation with French production outfit Why Us? (Premiere Heure) for commercials, who produced his first project behind the lens – a duo of short fashion

films Immersives and Stardust that deal with bodily movement and visual language. They were shaped with close collaborators Baptiste Chesnais, Benoit Talenton and Xavier Plèche. “In the first film, Immersives, we tried to find [actors] with opposing looks to play with ideas of equilibrium, reflection and self-exploration. The main idea is that we are all made up of our contradictions,” states Servadio of the piece, which sees two female characters interacting with and via planes, bubbles and drops of water that refract and reflect their images. “The second film, Stardust, is about auto-creation and power coming from within ourselves,” says Servadio. “I wanted to create a link between dancing and the movement of fire and the talented dancer Fanny Sage was perfect for that.”

The two films showcase both the technical expertise Servadio’s experience has bestowed upon him and his talent as a director. And if you’re wondering whether his background in post could ever tempt him to cut corners on set, it seems his in-depth knowledge prompts him not only to do things the right way, but also to challenge himself.

“On Stardust, all the fires were shot on set and then composited in Autodesk Flame. For me, live elements make the film more organic.”

“It’s often better to do special effects directly on set instead of visual effects in post production.

Post production is not for fixing problems but for improving the quality of the image,” he explains.

“For example, on Stardust, all the fires were shot on set and then composited in Autodesk Flame.

For me, live elements make the film more organic.”

Servadio’s intention with Immersives and Stardust was to create a set of films with “global understanding” and his next goal is to target the fashion and beauty sectors with “strong artistic vision and unique images”. His burning ambition to develop and express his ideas around corporal expression, movement and dance, together with his technical flair, should ensure a bright future for this diverse talent.

96 People | NEW DIRECTORS

Ish Sahotay MUSIC VIDEO Little Boots Taste It

If new director Ish Sahotay had his way, the next sushi bar you step into would present you with a buffet of naked girls wrapped in vacuum packs, bondage gear and Gucci-designed sausages, with sides of drug platters, booze, body parts and foot burgers. Luckily, English electropop singer Little Boots wanted the type of music video for her track Taste It that offered Sahotay a platform from which to express his twisted creative vision.

“The concept is presented as a sushi train of decadence,” explains the director. “The conveyer belt motion serves up the things we struggle to say no to, from food to drugs, sex to [plastic] surgery. The art direction pays homage to both 80s fashion photography and contemporary references relevant to the Tumblr generation.”

Sahotay collaborated with his girlfriend, fashion designer Marion Bergin, on the project. She art

directed and the pair spent days at her studio researching still life motifs and redesigning them to fit the theme. “We took inspiration from fashion, interior design, architecture and BDSM [bondage/ domination/sadism/masochism] porn,” he says.

The director’s path into film came indirectly via the fashion industry. He had founded a clothing label called Lay Lo, which was based on, of all things, Lindsay Lohan’s mug shots. The company’s trademark was to give out gold credit cards and tiny spoons with each T-shirt sold and it was a ploy that ended up winning him his first job.

“I went to try and get a position at Pulse Films as a runner and one of the founders, Ian Bonhôte, had a Lay Lo gold card in his wallet,” he explains.

“Initially he didn’t believe me when I told him it was my company, but after that we directed a fashion film together.”

In terms of the Little Boots video, it wasn’t just the visual aesthetic that appealed when he approached the treatment a few months ago. The track reminded him of his rap genre of choice – trap music from America’s ‘Dirty South’, so being a big fan he was in from the off.

His description of the resulting piece is one of awkward beauty and enticing imagery spliced together with unnerving scenarios that represent

“The concept is presented as a sushi train of decadence.

The conveyer belt motion serves up the things we struggle to say no to, from food to drugs, sex to surgery.”

| People 97

NEW DIRECTORS

“We used a mixture of match cuts, wipes and a composited time lapse to carry our protagonists along on their journey. While the eras and scenes are different, I felt they needed to be part of a continuum.”

Ivan Barge SHORT FILM Snooze Time

addictions that modern women can succumb to.

Reminiscing about the part of the shoot that saw him packaging up two naked models in an airtight wrapping, he recalls: “When we filmed that, we had our paramedic standing just out of shot with a pair of scissors – to cut them out if it went wrong. It was pretty intense.”

Since shooting the video Sahotay has signed with Biscuit Filmworks’ London office for representation in the UK and Europe and is excited about unleashing his bizarre brand of creativity on more projects soon. “I had never planned to direct,” he concludes. “I wanted to own a clothing brand and continue shooting fashion stills, which is what I’ve been doing for work for the past five years. I enjoyed this project more than I could ever have imagined and have many more messed-up ideas in the pipeline.”

In the time it takes you to read this you’ll learn a few things about stockbroker-turned-director Ivan Barge, but over the seven-minute duration of his short, Snooze Time, you’ll learn almost the entire life story of central character Evie and her relationship with her partner Thom. Barge’s film deftly explores the funny, and often painful, discrepancies between measured time and time as we experience it – from ‘microwave time’, when the seconds slow down, to ‘holiday time’, which doesn’t stretch as far as it should, and old age, when the days drag but the years fly by.

Written by Matthew Harris, the film is narrated by actor Lisa Harrow who, playing the older Evie, recalls her life with Thom, travelling via seamless transitions through the different time periods in the couple’s history. Barge

used post house BERYL to deliver these fluid transitions. “We used a mixture of match cuts, wipes and a composited time lapse to carry our protagonists along on their journey. While the eras and scenes are different, I felt they needed to be part of a continuum,” he explains.

What attracted Essex-born Barge to directing was the opportunity to tell a story and evoke emotion, something that number-crunching on the foreign exchange market didn’t allow for.

“The world of finance seemed an easy option, a job in TV and film back then just wouldn’t have even been on my radar,” he states. “But I did love film and TV. When the other kids were out playing football, I was glued to the box. So I guess I’ve always enjoyed watching stories.”

Aged 29, Barge quit his London job, moved to New Zealand and, after a couple of years off, started thinking about a career. Over a beer one night, a couple of friends working with director Nathan Price suggested he pop along the next day to help out on a music video shoot. “My first official role was the runner’s runner,” he recalls.

“I was keen and picked up a few gigs running, then I got the attention of Brian Kassler [founder of] Auckland-based production company Flying Fish, who’s been my mentor ever since. I learnt pretty quickly and after nine months I got a chance to produce some idents for [NZ broadcaster] Prime TV.” From there Barge was asked to EP Flying Fish’s music video offshoot Fish’n’Clips and, after learning the ropes producing over 70 videos in 20 months, he started looking for a short to direct. None struck a chord until the Snooze Time script came along.

In contrast to his first short’s nostalgia, Barge is very much forward facing. He has just directed his second short, Madam Black, a comedy funded by the New Zealand Film Commission. “I don’t dwell on the past; if anything I look too far forward,” Barge says.

“I love working in film and it’s inspiring to see someone like Ridley Scott still working at 76. I’d like to keep telling stories till I keel over on set.”

98 Pictures | snapshots

SnapSHOTS

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Sofia Maltseva, head of production service at Bazelevs Moscow, takes us on a stroll past the most picturesque views of Moscow, from gleaming domes to graffiti…

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1 One of the scenic viewpoints in the centre of Moscow 2 One of the ‘Seven Sister’ skyscrapers 3 A vintage car in the city centre 4 Moscow from the sky at night 5 Fountains in Museon Art Park

6 The Red October chocolate factory, now a complex of galleries and bars 7 The Peter The Great statue on the Moskva River

10 Street art 11 Sunset in the centre of Moscow 12 Flying a kite in a park 13 Sokolniki Park

8 The tallest Orthodox church in the world

14 Patriarshy Bridge

9 Getting ready to test a quadkopter

16 Me, cruising on the River Moskva

15 Cycling in a Moscow park